By Ebi Kesiena
Two bar shootings, one in a township close to Johannesburg, the other in eastern South Africa, left 19 dead, police said on Sunday as they tried to verify if the murders were linked.
In Soweto, 15 people were killed as they enjoyed a night out, police said, when assailants drew up in a minibus taxi and began randomly firing high-calibre guns at drinkers.
Police in the eastern city of Pietermaritzburg, in KwaZulu-Natal, reported four people were killed and eight wounded in a bar when two men fired discriminately at customers.
For the police it was too early to say if the assaults were in some way connected, but they observed their similarity.
The killings come two weeks to the day after the mysterious deaths of 21 people, mostly teens, in still unclear circumstances at a township tavern last month in the southern city of East London.
In Soweto, Johannesburg’s largest township to the southwest of South Africa’s economic capital, police were called to the scene shortly after midnight.
“When we arrived at the scene, 12 people were dead with gunshot wounds,” police officer Nonhlanhla Kubheka .
Eleven people were taken to hospital, and three later succumbed to their wounds.
The dead, who included two women, were aged between 19 and 35, provincial police chief Elias Mawela told AFP.
“According to witnesses they shot randomly,” said Mawela, adding forensic police were still collecting evidence.
There were no details regarding the assailants.
“Nobody has been arrested. They came and shot at people who were having fun,” said Kubheka, commander of the Orlando police station, the Soweto district where the shooting took place.
Hundreds of people massed behind police cordons as police investigated, AFP journalists reported.
Only a small poster showing beer prices at the bar could be seen outside the establishment located between houses. Police led away crying relatives of those caught up in the drama who tried to approach the crime scene.
