A knock at the door, then gunshots: Mass shooting at a house party in South Africa kills 11

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Three gunmen barged into a small house in an impoverished neighborhood in South Africa and opened fire on a group enjoying a party inside, killing at least 11 people including a pregnant woman, police and local authorities said Wednesday.

Three others were wounded in the late-night mass shooting Tuesday in KwaMakhutha township, which is located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the city of Durban on the east coast.

The motive for the shooting wasn’t known, but some of the shooting victims were known to authorities as part of investigations into criminal activity, police said.

Police didn’t give out any more information on those investigations, saying it could compromise them.

“Although the motive of the shooting cannot be confirmed yet, (a) feud between rival groupings cannot be ruled out,” the South African Police Service said in a statement.

Ten people, including the pregnant woman, died at the scene and an 11th was declared dead at a hospital. Authorities didn’t immediately give out details on the condition of the three people who were wounded.

They opened the door and ‘gunshots went off’

Nomusa Zulu, a community member, said two men killed in the shooting were her sons. She said witnesses told her that the victims had first gathered in the yard of the house, then went inside to continue the party as night fell and it became cold.

“They heard a knock at the door,” Zulu said. “When they opened the door, gunshots went off.”

Police are searching for the gunmen

Police said they were searching for three men and no arrests had been made, but the acting national police commissioner ordered local police to deploy officers in a special 72-hour operation to track down the suspects.

Thami Ntuli, the premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, told reporters at the scene that the killings were “really disturbing” and called on community members to provide any information they might have that would help find the gunmen. He said that there were known problems with drug dealing and illegal firearms in the largely poor community, where some of the houses are just a few meters apart with no fences or walls in between.

Ntuli confirmed in a statement that the woman who was killed was pregnant.

There have been several mass shootings in South Africa recently

It’s the latest in a series of mass shootings in South Africa recently, including one in June when multiple shooters killed 12 people in a poor neighborhood in Johannesburg that police linked to criminal gangs. Two mass shootings two weeks apart in December killed 21 people. They were also carried out by multiple gunmen.

South Africa has extremely high rates of violent crime, with official police statistics recording 5,427 homicides in the latest three-month period between April and June at an average of nearly 60 homicides a day.

Shootings are the most common form of homicide in South Africa, and police and crime experts have long said that one of the biggest problems is that there is a high number of illegal firearms in circulation.

The army is being used to combat violent crime in some areas

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa authorized the deployment of soldiers on the streets in some areas earlier this year to combat violent crime in what critics said was an admission that police were failing.

Soldiers were deployed to areas around Johannesburg, the city of Cape Town and in Eastern Cape province on the south coast in the ongoing operation, but not to KwaZulu-Natal province where the latest shooting happened.

The bodies of some of the victims of Tuesday night’s shooting were laid out on the ground and covered with white sheets outside the house where the shooting took place. They were later carried away on stretchers to pathology vans.

Police cordoned off the neighborhood with yellow tape while forensic investigators worked through the scene.

Police were also investigating if the torching of a car near the house was connected to the shooting.

___

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa