Police said Friday that ten members of the same family, seven of whom were women, and one reportedly a child, were killed in a mass shooting at a house in South Africa.
According to preliminary reports, they victims of the mass shooting were ambushed at their home in Pietermaritzburg, in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, by unknown gunmen. The shooting occurred either late Thursday night or early Friday morning.
Bheki Cele, the Police Minister, was scheduled to visit the scene on Friday.
After a shootout with police, a male suspect was killed, and two men were arrested. According to Police Minister Bheki Cele, a fourth suspect escaped but his identity is known and he is being sought.
The victims were initially identified as seven women and three men by police, but Cele stated that at least one child, a 13-year-old, was among the dead. Cele stated that the oldest victim of the shooting was 65 years old. He didn’t confirm the gender of the slain adolescent and provided no other information about the ages of the other victims.
The suspect who was killed was “notorious” and linked to other crimes in the area, Cele said, although he didn’t offer a motive for the mass shooting.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and there has been a spate of mass shootings in recent years.
Eight people were fatally shot at a birthday party in the south coast city of Gqeberha in January. Last year, 16 died in a mass shooting at a bar in the Johannesburg township of Soweto when a group of armed men, some of them wielding rifles, opened fire on customers.