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JOHANNESBURG -- More than 10 suspects got out of a minibus and moved through a poor neighborhood in South Africa's biggest city while shooting at residents in a late-night attack that killed at least 12 people and wounded nine others, police said Wednesday.
The mass shooting shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday in an informal settlement in the Cleveland suburb of Johannesburg had the hallmarks of organized crime gangs vying for control of illegal mining or other activities, though police said the motive was still under investigation.
Police said the shooters were dropped off at the settlement in a minibus “and moved through the area, opening fire on residents and community members at multiple locations before fleeing the scene in the same vehicle.”
The victims were nine men and three women, according to police. Eleven died at the scene and another victim died in the hospital.
A search was launched for the suspects and no arrests had been made, police said.
Informal settlements in South Africa are unplanned residential areas that are common in and around big cities where people looking for housing live in shacks or other makeshift structures.
Ambulances were on the scene on Wednesday morning to carry away the bodies of victims, while some community members huddled in groups on the streets.
South Africa has seen several high-profile mass shootings recently, including two in December that killed more than 20 people. One of those attacks also involved multiple shooters.
Mass shootings in South Africa are often connected to criminal gangs. In Johannesburg, violent gangs are involved in illicit mining in and around a city that has large gold reserves and many mines that have been abandoned by companies. Gangs establish operations in those mines to search for leftover deposits for the illicit trade.
They are renowned for fighting violent turf wars with rival gangs or other killings to try and reinforce their control of areas.
Cleveland is a suburb connected to illegal mining activity, a local council member said, though he added there were also other problems in the area including tensions over land between different parts of the local community and it was not certain illegal mining gangs were responsible for the killings.
“There are a lot of moving parts here so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is driving the issues,” council member Neuren Pietersen said in an interview with the eNCA TV station at the scene.
Police deployed specialist crime intelligence officers to the scene, according to police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe. Provincial police commissioner Tommy Mthombeni said the attackers were “heartless” but refused to link the killings to illegal mining until the investigation was complete.
South Africa has extremely high violent crime rates, with the country recording more than 23,000 homicides in the last financial year, according to official crime statistics, an average of more than 60 a day.
The phenomenon of illicit mining in Johannesburg and surrounding areas was one of the concerns that prompted the government in March to deploy the army to certain high-risk areas in a yearlong operation to stop violence linked to organized crime.
That move by the government was seen as an admission that police were losing the battle in some parts of the country where violent criminal gangs operate.
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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.
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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
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