Two days of rioting between African immigrants and local Italians in southern Italy has sparked a racial controversy that is engulfing the entire nation, reported The New York Times.

The violence started in Rosarno, a small town in the Southern Calabria region, when some local youths began shooting air guns at a group of migrant workers walking home from work. A Togolese and a Nigerian were wounded. Hundreds of African immigrants responded by setting fire to cars and bins, blocking a road and later rioting against police.

Some immigrants shouted, “we are not animals” while carrying signs that read “Italians here are racist”, reported Reuters.

Over the next two days, locals took part in the clashes, beating the Africans with metal rods and baseball bats, and shooting pellets at them, leaving 37 people wounded.

Consequently the immigrants, some of them illegal, were evacuated to the nearby town of Crotone. This left Rosarno as “the world’s only white town” according to The Guardian, who also accused locals of  having “unleashed bloody ethnic cleansing”.

Interior minister Roberto Maroni called the clashes "the fruit of the wrong kind of tolerance."

The New York Times described the immigrants as working and living in squalid conditions, and Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Italy, told the paper that the workers live in conditions of “semi slavery”.

This latest violence has once again forced immigration issues to the fore of national attention. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the nationalist Northern League Party, was strongly criticized by the Opposition for telling La Repubblica newspaper, “For years illegal immigration – which feeds criminal activities – has been tolerated and nothing effective has ever been done about it.” According to The New York Times, Maroni characterised the violence in Rosarno as “the fruit of the wrong kind of tolerance.”

The left responded to the riots by accusing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of “failing to enforce a crack-down requiring immigrants to have a job and proper housing, to be granted residence permit,” according to Al Jazeera.

The Pope himself intervened on Sunday, criticizing the clashes. “The immigrant is a human being, different in culture and tradition but one who should be respected all the same,” he told his congregation in Sunday. “And violence should never be used as a way to resolve difficulties.”