India’s foreign affairs minister has condemned “deplorable” race riots targeting African students near Delhi this week that put two men in hospital and led to seven arrests. The victims included a Kenyan woman who alleges she was pulled from a rickshaw on Wednesday morning and beaten by a group of men.

Police say at least 600 people were involved in the mob violence on Monday in and around Noida, a satellite city to the east of Delhi. Resentment towards Africans, thousands of whom study in Indian universities, has simmered in India in the past few years, fuelled partly by cultural differences and the involvement of a small proportion of people from the continent in the Delhi drug trade.A number of opinion pieces in the Indian media have also attributed the attacks to racist attitudes towards foreigners from African countries.(guardian)…[+]