South Africa: 11 killed, 14 injured in Pretoria mass shooting

The death toll from Saturday’s horrific shooting in Pretoria has climbed to 11, casting a dark pall over the Saulsville Hostel in Atteridgeville, where the tragedy unfolded in the early hours of dawn.

According to the South African Police Service (SAPS), 25 people were gunned down, leaving 11 dead and 14 wounded, all now fighting for their lives in hospital beds. Among the victims were three children — boys aged 3 and 12, and a 16-year-old girl — a detail that has deepened the nation’s grief. The shooting erupted inside an illegal shebeen, where a small crowd had been drinking.

Local reports say the gunfire began shortly after 4:15 am, but it was nearly two hours before police were alerted. When officers arrived, they swept into action, summoning forensic and ballistics teams and launching an intensive manhunt for the three unidentified gunmen believed to have stormed the hostel and opened fire indiscriminately.

SAPS spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said detectives and the Serious and Violent Crime Unit are now “piecing together” the fragments of a night drenched in chaos. She also underscored the persistent dangers posed by illegal and unlicensed liquor venues, noting that between April and September alone, authorities shut down 11,975 illicit outlets and arrested more than 18,600 people involved in illegal liquor sales.

The Pretoria massacre comes on the heels of another brutal episode just last month, when seven men were killed in a mass shooting on Road R53 in Cape Town’s Philippi East — part of the troubled Cape Flats, where gun violence and gang warfare continue to tighten their grip. Civil society groups warn that the Western Cape is teetering on the edge of a full-blown crisis.

In September, as bullets claimed over a dozen lives in barely a week, Cape Town authorities were forced to close several minibus taxi routes for 30 days — a stark measure that underscored the desperation of a city fighting to breathe amid spiralling violence.

With IANS inputs