The incident came to light shortly after midnight when a group of men armed with rifles and 9mm pistols entered the bar in the slum settlement of Nomzamo near Johannesburg and began shooting “randomly” at customers, Gauteng police said in a statement.
Police said 23 people were shot dead at the institution – 12 died at the scene and 11 were rushed to a nearby hospital with injuries. It was announced that two more people died in hospital.
Police have opened investigations into 14 cases of murder and nine cases of attempted murder, according to the statement.
“It’s a bad sight, when you see the corpses [that] Stacked up, you can see that every one of these people [was] “She is struggling to get out of the bar,” Gauteng Police Commissioner Elias Moila told South African news channel Anka.
Moila said police have not yet determined the details of the motive or why the people in the bar were targeted.
“I have no doubts that together with the community here, we will be able to resolve this issue,” Moela added.
Police called on witnesses to come forward, saying the suspects were still on the run.
Four other people were killed in a separate shooting incident at a bar in Sweetwaters in Pietermaritzburg on Saturday night, police said Sunday.
At least 12 people were killed after two men entered the bar and “opened indiscriminately,” KwaZulu-Natal District Commissioner, Lt. Gen. Nahlanhla Mkhwanazi, said in a statement. As in the Soweto shooting, police said the suspects are still at large and a manhunt is underway.
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