Three children among 11 people killed in mass shooting at South African bar

At least 11 people, including three children, were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in a township near the South African administrative capital of Pretoria, police said on Saturday.

Another 14 people were wounded and taken to hospital with gunshot wounds, according to a statement from the South African Police Services.

Police did not give details on the ages of those who were injured.

The shooting happened at an unlicensed bar in the Saulsville township west of Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday.

The children killed were a three-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said they were searching for three suspects.

“We are told that at least three unknown gunmen entered this hostel where a group of people were drinking and they started randomly shooting,” police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC.

She said the motive for the killings was not clear. The shootings happened at around 4.15am, she said, but police were alerted only at 6am.

There have been several mass shootings at bars – sometimes called shebeens or taverns in South Africa – in recent years, including one that killed 16 people in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022.

Police said 18 people were killed, 15 of them women, in mass shootings at two separate houses on the same road in a rural part of Eastern Cape province in September last year.

Seven men were arrested for those shootings and face multiple charges of murder, while police recovered three AK-style assault rifles they believe were used in the shootings.