Twelve Killed, Nine Injured in Johannesburg Shooting
Police spokeswoman said about 10 assailants were driven to the Jumpers settlement, dropped off, and then swept into the area.
A late-night assault ripped through an informal settlement near Johannesburg, where gunmen opened fire and killed 12 people, South African police said.
The attack unfolded shortly before midnight in a poor community of corrugated-metal shacks near an area occupied by illegal miners, according to police.
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Police spokeswoman said about 10 assailants were driven to the Jumpers settlement, dropped off, and then swept into the area.
“The suspects allegedly entered the informal settlement through both entrances and moved through the area, opening fire on residents and community members at multiple locations before fleeing the scene in the same vehicle,” she said.
“Eight adult males and three adult females were declared dead at the scene,” she said. One person died in hospital.
The settlement lies about 6km east of central Johannesburg, close to an abandoned gold mine.
South Africa has long struggled with the widespread circulation of both legal and illegal firearms, and gun violence is common, often driven by gang feuds and battles over informal trade.
Police said they had yet to establish a motive and no arrests had been made, though investigators suspect the bloodshed may be tied to rivalry over illegal mining in the area.
Gunmen were ‘savage, merciless’, says Lieutenant General Tommy Mthombeni
“At this stage, we could not determine what is the motive,” provincial commissioner Lieutenant General Tommy Mthombeni told reporters at the scene.
“As you know, this area is adjacent to the illegal mining area. We are having those suspicions.”
“One can term this incident to be insane, to be heartless and to an extent, it is barbaric,” he said.
Illegal mining in South Africa attracts workers from across southern Africa and has been increasingly associated with organised crime, contract killings, extortion and other illicit activity.
Secretive artisanal miners have become a fixture in the shack settlements surrounding Johannesburg and the satellite communities stretched along the old gold belt.
Pushed by poverty and chronic unemployment, the zama zamas – meaning “those who try” in Zulu – venture deep into still gold-bearing shafts abandoned by mining companies.
In December, nine people were killed in another mass shooting tied to conflict between illegal mining groups, when gunmen opened fire at a bar in the impoverished Bekkersdal township southwest of Johannesburg, also in a gold-mining district.
In March, soldiers were deployed to violence-ridden parts of Johannesburg to bolster police operations against soaring crime, which President Cyril Ramaphosa has called one of the country’s gravest threats.
