Johannesburg, Jun 10: A group of armed attackers drove into a poor neighbourhood in South Africa’s biggest city, got out of a minivan and opened fire at residents in a late-night attack in Johannesburg that killed 12 people and wounded at least nine, police said Wednesday.
The attack unfolded late on Tuesday night in an informal settlement in the city’s Cleveland suburb, police said, adding that there were at least 10 suspected attackers who later fled the scene.
Johannesburg has long been the scene of organised crime gangs vying for control of illegal mining or other activities, though police said the motive of the latest shooting was still under investigation.
Police said the shooters were dropped off at the settlement in a minibus “and moved through the area, opening fire on residents and community members at multiple locations before fleeing the scene in the same vehicle.”
The victims were nine men and three women, according to police. Eleven died at the scene and another victim died in the hospital.
Police say the shooting was insane and barbaric
Police said a search was launched for the suspects and the vehicle but that no arrests had been made.
Provincial police commissioner Tommy Mthombeni called the killings “insane, heartless and, to a certain extent, barbaric.” He said it was too early to link them to illegal mining gangs as an investigation was underway, but police were considering that as a possible motive.
He said a recent police operation in the area had confiscated illegal firearms, including assault rifles, and illegal miners were known to operate there.
Ambulances were on the scene on Wednesday morning to carry away the victims’ bodies while community members huddled in groups on the streets.
Informal settlements in South Africa are unplanned residential areas that are common in and around big cities where people looking for housing live in shacks or other makeshift structures. Illegal miners sometimes operate in the same areas.
South Africa has seen several mass shootings recently
South Africa has seen several high-profile mass shootings recently, including two in December that killed more than 20 people. One of those attacks also involved multiple shooters.
Mass shootings in South Africa are often connected to criminal gangs. In Johannesburg, violent gangs are involved in illicit mining in and around a city that has large gold reserves and many mines that have been abandoned by companies.
Gangs search abandoned mines for leftover gold deposits, which they sometimes store in hideouts in the informal settlements. Rival gangs also fight turf wars for control of areas.
Cleveland is a suburb connected to illegal mining activity, a local council member said, though he added there were also other problems in the area including tensions over land between different parts of the local community and it was not certain illegal mining gangs were responsible for the killings.
“There are a lot of moving parts here so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is driving the issues,” council member Neuren Pietersen said in an interview with the eNCA TV station at the scene.
Tracing the minibus used by the shooters is a priority
Acting national police commissioner Puleng Dimpane said in a statement that specialist forensic investigators and tactical response teams have been deployed. Tracing the white minibus was a priority, Dimpane said.
South Africa has extremely high violent crime rates, with the country recording more than 23,000 killings in the last financial year, according to official crime statistics, an average of more than 60 a day.
Illegal mining in Johannesburg and the surrounding areas was one of the concerns that prompted the government in March to deploy the army to certain high-risk areas in a yearlong operation to stop violence linked to organised crime.
That move by the government was seen as an admission that police were losing the battle in some parts of the country where violent criminal gangs operate. (AP)
