According to authorities, 19 people were killed in two bar shootings, one in a eastern South Africa and the other in a township close to Johannesburg.
Police said on Sunday that gunmen in a minibus taxi pulled up and started shooting indiscriminately at bar patrons in Soweto, killing 15 people who were out having fun.
In the eastern city of Pietermaritzburg, four people were murdered and eight were injured after a gunfight in a pub when two men fired indiscriminately at customers.
Police sources said it was too early to tell if the assaults were related, but they did see similarities.
Faith Mazibuko, a member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Community Safety, told Al Jazeera, “It saddens us that anyone now who posseses a gun wants to try their gun on our communities.”
“We wish to call upon communities to actually well indeed assist the police in bringing to book those perpetrators.”
“We were called in the early hours of the morning, around 12:30 am [22:30 GMT],” said police lieutenant Elias Mawela.
According to local police officer Nonhlanhla Kubheka, 12 people were already dead with gunshot wounds when police arrived at the scene.
She added 11 people were taken to hospital, and that three died shortly after arrival.
No one has been arrested, thus far.
They arrived and opened fire on individuals who were having fun, claimed Kubheka, commander of the Orlando police station, where the incident took place in the Soweto neighborhood.
The pub was located in Soweto’s Orlando district, Johannesburg’s biggest township located southeast of the capital.
Mawela claims that a high-calibre weapon was used to indiscriminately shoot individuals within the licensed bar, and the quantity of cartridges discovered at the site suggested that more than one person or group was responsible for the shootings.
Everybody there was attempting to leave the tavern, as you can see, according to Mawela.
4 Dead and 8 injured in separate incident
In a separate event, a shootout took place in a pub in Pietermaritzburg, in eastern South Africa, and four people were killed.
Nqobile Gwala, spokesman for the local police, reported that eight additional people were hurt in the incident on Saturday.
He said that two men pulled up, went inside the pub, and “fired random shots at the patrons” before leaving. There were eight more injuries.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
