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At least 11 people, including three children, have been killed in a mass shooting by multiple suspects at an unlicensed bar near the South African capital on Saturday.
According to South African Police Services, another 14 people were injured and taken to hospital.
The shooting occurred at a bar inside a hostel in Soulsville township, west of the administrative capital. Pretoria, In the early hours of Saturday. Police said ten victims died at the scene and an eleventh died in hospital.
The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said they are searching for three male suspects.
“We are told that at least three unidentified gunmen entered the hostel where a group of people were drinking and started firing randomly,” said police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC. He said the motive for the killings was not clear. The firing took place at 4.15 am, he said, but the police were alerted only at 6 am.
South Africa It has one of the highest murder rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 murders in 2024, an average of more than 70 per day. By far the leading cause of death in homicides is firearms.
Authorities say gun ownership laws are relatively strict in the country of 62 million people, but many murders are committed with illegal guns.
Many mass shootings have occurred in bars, sometimes called shebeens or bars. South AfricaIn recent years, including the death of 16 people in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022. The same day, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in another province.
Mathe said mass shootings at unlicensed bars were becoming a serious problem and police had closed more than 11,000 illegal taverns and arrested more than 18,000 people for their involvement in illegal liquor sales between April and September this year.
However, recent mass killings in South Africa have not been confined to bars. Last September, 18 people, 15 of them women, were killed in a mass shooting at two houses on the same road in a rural part of the Eastern Cape province, police said.
Seven people were arrested and charged with multiple counts of murder for those shootings, while police recovered three AK-style assault rifles they believe were used in the shootings.