Gunman kills 17 in rural South African town | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

JOHANNESBURG – Seventeen people, including 15 women, were killed in two mass shootings that took place in two houses on the same street in a rural town in South Africa, police said Saturday.

A search for the suspects is underway, said state police spokesman Brig. Athlenda Mathe said in a statement. The victims were 15 women and two men, she said. Another person was in critical condition in hospital.

That person was among four women, a man and a two-month-old baby who survived one of the shootings. Authorities initially did not provide information on the age or gender of the person in critical condition or the health of the other survivors.

The shootings occurred on Friday evening in the town of Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape province of southeastern South Africa.

Three women and a man were killed in the first shooting at a home, but there were no survivors, police said. A short time later, twelve women and one man were killed in a separate house. The survivors were present at these second shootings. The shootings occurred late Friday night or early Saturday morning, police said.

Videos from the crime scene released by police showed a cluster of rural farms along a dirt road on the edge of the city. Residents sat on the side of the road as police and forensic investigators cordoned off areas with yellow and black crime scene tape and began their investigation.

National police commissioner General Fannie Masemola said he had ordered the deployment of a special team of detectives from the administrative capital Pretoria to assist in the investigation.

“A manhunt has been launched to nab those responsible for these heinous murders,” Mathe said.

Local media reported that the individuals were attending a family gathering at the time of the shooting. However, police gave no indication of a possible motive, nor how many shooters there were or what type of weapons were used. However, police considered the shootings to be related.

Police Minister Senzo Mchunu told a news conference later on Saturday that the number of people killed had been “unbearably large” and that those responsible “cannot escape justice.”

“We have full confidence in the team deployed to solve this case and find these criminals. Either they turn themselves in or we get them ourselves,” said Mchunu.

South Africa, a country of 62 million people, has one of the highest murder rates in the world. According to the police’s official crime statistics, 12,734 homicides were recorded in the first six months of this year. That’s an average of more than 70 per day. Firearms were by far the most common cause of death in these cases.

Mass shootings have become increasingly common in recent years, some of which have targeted people in their homes. Ten members of the same family, including seven women and a 13-year-old boy, were killed in a mass shooting at their home in neighboring KwaZulu-Natal province in April 2023.

In 2022, 16 people were fatally shot at a bar in Johannesburg’s Soweto township, the worst mass shooting in South Africa in decades before the recent killings in Lusikisiki.

Authorities have often pointed out that the large number of illegal, unregistered weapons circulating in South Africa is a major problem. Authorities sometimes hold so-called firearm amnesties, in which people can hand over illegal weapons to the police without prosecution.