Police in South Africa confirmed 19 people were killed early Sunday morning in two separate mass shootings denounced by the president as “unacceptable and worrying.”
The first was in Soweto is Johannesburg’s largest township to the southwest of the country’s economic capital.
Police report they were called to the mass shooting scene in a local bar shortly after midnight.
“When we arrived at the scene, 12 people were dead with gunshot wounds, “police officer Nonhlanhla Kubheka told AFP.
She added 11 people were taken to hospital. Three died shortly after arrival while another died later.
No further details regarding the shooters was released.
A relative of one of the victims cries as south African Police Service officers refuse to let her cross the police barrier and enter the crime scene in Soweto, South Africa, on July 10, 2022. Fourteen people were killed during a shootout in a bar on July 10, 2022. (IHSAAN HAFFEJEE/AFP via Getty Images)
Residents of the Nomzamo informal settlement react to a crime scene where 15 people where shot dead in a tavern in Soweto on July 10, 2022. (EMMANUEL CROSET/AFP via Getty Images)
“Nobody has been arrested. Officers are still on site. They came and shot at people who were having fun,” said Kubheka, commander of the Orlando police station, the Soweto district where the shooting took place.
“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 South African news channel ENCA, as reported by CNN.
Mawela said police are yet to determine details on the motive or why the people at the tavern were targeted.
A woman weeps at the scene of an overnight bar shooting in Soweto, South Africa, Sunday July 10, 2022. A mass shooting at a tavern in Johannesburg’s Soweto township has killed 15 people and left others in critical condition, according to police. (AP Photo/Shiraaz Mohamed)
“I have no doubt that with the cooperation of the community here, we will be able to crack this case,” Mawela added.
Hundreds of people were massed behind police cordons through Sunday as police investigated, local outlet IOS reports. Only a small poster showing beer prices at the bar could be seen outside the establishment.
Police led away relatives of those caught up in the drama who tried to approach the crime scene.
In the eastern city of Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal province four people were killed and eight wounded in a bar when two men fired indiscriminately at customers.
“As a nation, we cannot allow violent criminals to terrorise us in this way, regardless of where such incidents may occur,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement.
The violent deaths are “unacceptable and worrying” he added, offering condolences for the lives lost under “similar circumstances” in Soweto and Pietermaritzburg.