Ten members of the same family shot dead in horror massacre after mystery gunmen storm house in South Africa
TEN members of the same family, seven of them women and one child, were killed in a mass shooting at a house in South Africa.
They were ambushed by unknown gunmen who stormed their home in the eastern city of Pietermaritzburg, police said on Friday.
The shooting happened on Thursday night or early Friday morning and the child killed in the shooting is reportedly a 13-year-old, but nothing else has been released on the victim.
Forensic experts are on the scene. The motive is not yet known.
A male suspect was since been killed in a shootout with police hours after two other men were arrested. A fourth suspect escaped but his identity is known and he is being sought, Cele said.
Cele, who was at the scene, said police confronted four men on a street about a mile from the house where the mass shooting occurred and the men shot at officers.
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"Police shot back, killed one, injured one, who is arrested, and one is arrested uninjured. One has run away," Cele said. "Fortunately they know who ran away."
"It's a crime scene, terrible. Too many people were lost here," the police minister said in comments broadcast by SABC.
Cele said police management needed to sit down to talk about whether the province needed more police resources.
The community, which has been experiencing a surge of violent crime recently, is said to be in shock following the mass murder, local media reports.
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Ward councillor Mabhungu Mkhize told the South African outlet : “I went to the scene and when I got there the police had already put out tapes.
"I could not see because it was dark, but the police told us 10 people were killed."
He continued: "We are yet to understand if there were children who were also killed.
“This is not different from a massacre.
"We had a mass shooting last year but four people were killed. This is shocking. I am also going to call family members to see how we can assist them.”
In the same 24 hours, a teenage girl was shot dead walking home from school also in the KwaZulu-Natal province, according to South African outlet
The motive behind the 17-year-old's killing is not yet known and is being investigated.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world - with about 20,000 murders a year in a population of 60 million - and there has been a spate of mass shootings in recent years.
Eight people were fatally shot at a birthday party in the south coast city of Gqeberha in January.
Last year, 16 died in a mass shooting at a bar in the Johannesburg township of Soweto when a group of armed men, some of them wielding rifles, opened fire on customers.
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Only hours after, gunmen opened fire in a bar in Pietermaritzburg - the same city where the massacre today occurred - and sprayed bullets all over terrified customers.
Twelve were shot and four killed in the second mass shooting to occur in a night of horror for South Africa.
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