Two mass shootings in South Africa have resulted to the killing of twenty-seven (27) people. The incident is the latest gun violence to hit the country.
When eight (8) gunmen invaded a bar close to Johannesburg in the evening of Saturday, seventeen (17) people were killed, with fifteen (15) others left with various degrees of injury.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, in a different shooting, ten (10) more people were killed outside an entertainment spot in a township near Cape Town, as well as, eleven (11) left injured.
South Africa is known to have one of the highest murder rates in the world, and is finding it difficult to curb gang-related gun violence in recent years.
The Police are yet to release any reason for any of the two (2) mass shootings.
Gunmen opened fire on customers outside the bar in Johannesburg before moving on to continue the shooting inside; they also set ablaze two (2) vehicles before taking to their heels.
Thirteen (13) men and four (4) women were killed, as revealed by the Police.
Lt Gen Tommy Mthombeni, Police Commissioner of Gauteng, disclosed, people from Lesotho and Ethiopia were among those caught up in the shooting, however, the most people affected are South Africans.
He said, the belief by the Police is that, the reason for the shooting is robbery, as personal belongings had been taken. He added, the turf wars between illegal mining factions could not be ruled out.
In South Africa, mining without permission in abandoned shafts or dump areas is a stubborn problem. These illegal mining activities bring about numerous deaths from unsafe conditions.
According to authorities, the miners are generally migrants without official papers recruited by organized crime gangs.
Earlier, Maj Gen Fred Kekana, Deputy Provincial police commissioner, said, the attack may likely be a revenge for an incident that happened last month, in which one (1) death was recorded, with another left with wounds, according to an AFP report.
In Cape Town, five (5) victims died on the scene and another five (5) died in the hospital.
As at Sunday morning, no arrest had been made.
The two (2) mass shootings happened just days after the killing of eleven (11) people in the city of Durban when gunmen attacked a house in KwaMakhutha, a township in KwaZulu-Natal.
In South Africa, illegal weapons are common, and gun violence has been a relentless issue for decades. This leads to a scary record of about sixty (60) murders every day in a country of 62 million.
However, a recent series of mass shootings has ignited worries that the problem is heightening, with violence mostly connected to turf wars between gangs that engage in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
