By Enyichukwu Enemanna
At least 12 persons were feared dead on Saturday during a mass shooting in an unlicensed bar near the South African capital Pretoria, with victims including children aged 3, 12 and 16.
A police source said another 13 people were wounded and were receiving treatment at an undisclosed medical facility but did not give details on their ages or their conditions.
The police had earlier reported 11 deaths but adjusted the figure to include a 12th victim who died in the hospital.
The shooting happened at a bar inside a hostel in the Saulsville township west of the administrative capital of Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday. Ten of the victims died at the scene and two others died at the hospital, police said.
The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said manhunt for three male suspects has commenced.
“We are told that at least three unknown gunmen entered this hostel where a group of people were drinking and they started randomly shooting,” police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC.
She said the motive for the killings was not clear. The shootings happened at around 4.15 a.m., she said, but police were only alerted at 6 a.m.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024, an average of more than 70 a day.
Firearms were identified to be the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, authorities say.
In 2022, 16 people were killed in a tavern mass shooting in the Johannesburg township of Soweto. On the same day, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in another province.
The police spokesperson said that mass shootings at unlicensed bars were becoming a serious problem and police had shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
