Israel began releasing a second group of around 600 African migrants from a desert detention center on Wednesday after a court order, the prison authorities said, according to AFP.
The supreme court this month ordered Israel to free illegal migrants held for more than a year at the Holot Detention Centre in the Negev desert, in a ruling that affected 1,178 asylum seekers. A first batch of hundreds was freed on Tuesday but barred from entering the cities of Tel Aviv and Eilat in the face of hostility from many residents.
Official figures show 45,000 illegal immigrants are in Israel, almost all from Eritrea and Sudan.