No fewer than fourteen people have been confirmed dead following a shootout in a bar in South Africa’s Soweto township, close to Johannesburg, police authorities have disclosed.
A police lieutenant whose name was given as Elias Mawela told reporters after the shooting took place overnight Saturday and Sunday.
He said; ‘We were called in the early hours of the morning, around 12:30 am (2230 GMT)’.
‘When we arrived on the scene, 12 people were confirmed dead,’ he said.
Mawela said 11 others were taken to hospital with wounds but two later died, raising the toll to 14.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the bar was in the Orlando district of Soweto, Johannesburg’s largest township, southwest of the city.
Police stated that 23 people were shot in the establishment — 12 died at the scene and 11 were rushed to a nearby hospital with injuries. At least two more people were declared dead at the hospital.
The suspects are still on the run, according to police, who have called on witnesses to come forward.
‘It’s a bad scene. When you see the bodies [that] are piled up, you can see that every one of those people [was] struggling to get out of the tavern,’ Gauteng Police Commissioner Elias Mawela told reporters.
Mawela said the police are yet to determine details on the motive or why the people at the tavern were targeted.
‘I have no doubt that with the cooperation of the community here, we will be able to crack this case,’ he added.
In a separate shooting incident in a bar in Sweetwaters in Pietermaritzburg on Saturday evening, four other people were also killed, police said Sunday.
The Provincial Commissioner of KwaZulu-Natal, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, said in a statement that at least 12 people were shot after two men entered the tavern and “randomly opened fire.”
As in the Soweto shooting, police said the suspects were still at large and a manhunt was under way.
