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Russian police rounded up more than 1,600 migrants on Monday in Moscow after rioting swept through a southern neighborhood over a fatal stabbing of a Russian that many residents blame on a man from the Caucasus region, Reuters reported. 

Advocacy groups warned migrants from Russia's mainly Muslim Caucasus region and Central Asia of an increased risk of attacks in the worst ethnic disturbance in Moscow in three years. Authorities stepped up police patrols in the capital.

Some 200 residents rallied in the Biryulyovo district on Monday night to call for tougher policing of labor migrants, in a second day of protests over the stabbing death of an ethnic Russian, 25-year-old Yegor Shcherbakov.

Police detained ten people, local media reported

A bigger protest a day earlier had turned to violent riots.

"We are scared to walk the streets at night," blond-haired resident, Alexei Zhuravlyov, said. "They (migrants) are always attacking, stealing from and killing people. They don't even abide by basic rules like stopping at a red light."

Migrant labor has played a significant role in Russia's transformation during an oil-fuelled economic boom that took off around the time President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.

But many in Moscow are uneasy at the influx of migrants from Russia's heavily Muslim North Caucasus and ex-Soviet states of the Caucasus and Central Asia, although many do low-paying jobs, such as in construction, that few local residents want.