Police in South Africa are searching for suspects after nine people were killed in separate shooting incidents in two of the country’s provinces on Saturday night, law enforcement said. The latest spate of shootings comes after a rise in violent deaths in a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world. Four people were shot and two others injured in Thembelihle informal settlement, a southern suburb of Johannesburg. The preliminary investigation shows that a group of men were playing dice on a street corner at around 19:30 (17:30 GMT) on Saturday when they were attacked by unknown assailants who shot them, authorities said in a statement. “Four people were pronounced dead at the scene on Saturday, while two people were taken to the nearest medical center with gunshot wounds,” police said on Sunday. Regional Police Commissioner Elias Mauela described the crime scene as “horrific”. “They sat down. They were attacked for no apparent reason,” he said. In a separate incident also in Thembelihle, a 36-year-old man who appeared to have been robbed of his belongings, including a mobile phone and a bicycle, was found dead from gunshot wounds, they added. Police said a motive for the shooting could not be confirmed at this stage. Meanwhile, in the Western Cape province, police have launched an investigation into the circumstances of a triple murder on Saturday night in the town of Khayelitsha. A fourth killing was an unrelated incident, said Col. Andre Trout. On Friday, eight suspects were arrested in connection with the “random” separate shootings and robberies of six people on Thursday night in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township, officials said. It is not yet clear if the suspects in the Alexandra shooting were in the same group that carried out all the murders. About 20,000 people are murdered in South Africa every year out of a population of about 60 million.
