Iran Press/ Africa: South Africa, home to about 60 million people, is one of the world’s most violent countries with 20,000 people murdered every year, one of the highest per-capita murder rates globally.
Attackers armed with rifles and pistols opened fire in the Orlando East bar in the township of Soweto in the early hours of Sunday, killing 15 people and wounding nine, police said.
“You can see by the way the bullet cartridges are cast around that they were just shooting randomly,” said Elias Mawela, police commissioner for Gauteng province.
Sololo Mjoli’s two sons, Sthembiso, 34, Luyanda, 18, and were both killed in the attack at the bar in one of Soweto’s poorer neighborhoods, made up mostly of metal sheet shacks.
South African Police confirmed a second apparently random shooting hours earlier, at around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, in a tavern in Pietermaritzburg, 500 km southeast of Soweto, which saw four people killed and eight wounded.
Officers said they did not believe the two shootings were linked. The killers from both incidents are on the run, according to police, who said it was not clear how many attackers were involved in either shooting. 219
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