The anniversary turned into carnage: in South Africa, gunmen fired on guests during a party in a township on Sunday evening, killing eight people, for reasons which remained unknown on Monday.
The party was in full swing Sunday evening in a house in a poor suburb of the port city of Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth, south): the master of the place was celebrating his birthday. When suddenly, two armed men appeared and fired.
Eight people were killed, three injured and taken to hospital, according to a police statement released Monday, which states that “the owner of the house is among those who died”.
Condemning “a ruthless attack conducted in cold blood”, the chief of police of the province quoted in the press release, Nomthetheleli Mene, assured to have ordered the investigators “to pursue and find the perpetrators of the shooting as quickly as possible”.
The day after the killing, a few dozen shocked neighbors gathered in the morning in front of the small, modest-looking brown house. Near the wall, a barbecue and empty sacks of charcoal still remind us of the abruptly interrupted party.
Mandla Booi, 55, a neighbor, told AFP that he narrowly escaped the bullets. Invited out of the blue by a friend as he passed by the house, he did not stay long: “Not even 20 minutes later, I heard the exchange of gunfire”.
Blind crime, score settling, neighborhood dispute? The reasons behind the attack are still vague.
South Africa is one of the most violent countries in the world, notorious for a high crime rate. A murder is committed there every 19 minutes, according to the latest official police statistics.
In November, six people died not far from the scene of Sunday’s tragedy, in a shooting in another township of Gqeberha. The police had then evoked a den of drug traffickers.
Bloody shootings regularly shock the country.
In July 2022, four people were shot dead in the suburbs of Johannesburg. The male victims were sitting around a fire and playing dice when the killers appeared.
A week earlier, shootings at two bars across the country left 20 people dead, including 16 at a Soweto tavern. The assailants had opened fire with large calibers on a crowd that was having fun. The victims were young, between 19 and 35 years old.
As often, the police had condemned violent attacks “without apparent motive”, perpetrated by killers shooting blindly.
Interior Minister Bheki Cele, who visited the scene of the latest shooting on Monday, called on his troops to act “more quickly and firmly” against the crime, to provide answers to an “angry” population. .
Police experts were also dispatched to the scene. An investigation has been opened for murders and attempted murders. At this stage, the police have not yet made any arrests.
30/01/2023 15:38:13 – Gqeberha (South Africa) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP