17 people have been killed in 2 mass shootings in the same street in South Africa

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17 people have been killed in 2 mass shootings in the same street in South Africa

2024-09-29 02:46 Last Updated At：02:51

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Seventeen people, including 15 women, were killed in two mass shootings that took place at two homes on the same street in a rural town in South Africa, police said Saturday.

A search was underway for the suspects, national police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe said in a statement. The victims were 15 women and two men, she said. One other person was in critical condition in the hospital.

That person was among four women, a man and a 2-month-old baby who survived one of the shootings. Authorities didn't immediately give any details on the age or gender of the person in critical condition or the medical conditions of the other survivors.

The shootings took place Friday night in the town of Lusikisiki in Eastern Cape province in southeastern South Africa.

Three women and a man were killed in the first shootings at a home, where there were no survivors, police said. Twelve women and a man were killed at a separate home a short time later. The survivors were present at those second shootings. The shootings occurred late Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday, police said.

Video released by police from the scene showed a collection of rural homesteads along a dirt road on the outskirts of the town. Residents sat on the edge of the road as police and forensic investigators blocked off areas with yellow and black crime scene tape and began their investigations.

National police commissioner Gen. Fannie Masemola said he had ordered a specialist team of detectives be deployed from the administrative capital, Pretoria, to help with the investigation.

“A manhunt has been launched to apprehend those behind these heinous killings,” police spokesperson Mathe said.

Local media reported that the people were attending a family gathering at the time of the shooting, but police gave no indication of any possible motive, nor how many shooters there were and what type of guns were used. Police were treating the shootings as connected, however.

Police minister Senzo Mchunu said at a press conference later Saturday that it was an “intolerably huge number” of people killed and those responsible “can't escape justice.”

“We have full faith and confidence in the team that has been deployed to crack this case and find these criminals. Either they hand themselves over or we will fetch them ourselves,” Mchunu said.

South Africa, a country of 62 million, has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. It recorded 12,734 homicides in the first six months of this year, according to official crime statistics from the police. That’s an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms were by far the biggest cause of deaths in those cases.

Mass shootings have become increasingly common in recent years, sometimes targeting people in their homes. Ten members of the same family, including seven women and a 13-year-old boy, were killed in a mass shooting at their home in the neighboring KwaZulu-Natal province in April 2023.

Sixteen people were fatally shot in a bar in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022, the worst mass shooting in South Africa in decades before the latest killings in Lusikisiki.

Firearm laws are reasonably strict in South Africa, but authorities have often pointed to the large number of illegal, unregistered guns in circulation as a major problem. Authorities sometimes hold what they call firearm amnesties, where people can hand over illegal guns to police without being prosecuted.

Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

Hezbollah confirms its leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike

2024-09-29 02:49 Last Updated At：02:51

BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanon’s Hezbollah group confirmed on Saturday that its leader and one of its founding members, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a southern suburb of Beirut.

The killing of the powerful militant group’s longtime leader sent shockwaves throughout Lebanon and the Middle East, where he has been a dominant political and military figure for more than three decades.

Nasrallah has been on Israel’s kill list for decades. His assassination is by far the biggest and most consequential of Israel’s targeted killings in years. The Israeli military said it carried out a precise airstrike on Friday while Hezbollah leaders were meeting at their headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut.

Immediately after the confirmation from Hezbollah, people starting firing in the air in Beirut and across Lebanon to mourn Nasrallah’s death.

“Wish it was our kids, not you, Sayyid!” said one woman, using an honorific title for Nasrallah, as she clutched her baby in the western city of Baabda.

“We don’t believe he is killed," a woman draped in black, tearfully told al-Manar TV in Bekaa, western Lebanon. "We don’t. We left our homes and came here for him and for the resistance,”

In his first public remarks since the killing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday evening that Israel had no choice but to target Nasrallah.

“At the start of the week, I came to the conclusion that the intense blows the Israeli military struck Hezbollah with, these blows were not enough. Nasrallah’s assassination was an essential condition to achieving the goals we set,” Netanyahu said.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people were killed and 91 injured in the strikes, which leveled six apartment buildings. Ali Karki, the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front and other commanders were also killed, the Israeli military said.

A statement from Hezbollah said Nasrallah — who led the group for more than three decades — “has joined his fellow martyrs.” The group vowed to “continue the holy war against the enemy and in support of Palestine.”

Hezbollah started firing rockets on Israel in support of Gaza on Oct. 8, a day after Hamas militants launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting another 250. Since then, the two sides have been engaged in escalating cross-border strikes.

Earlier this month, thousands of explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah detonated, killing dozens of people and maiming thousands, including many civilians. Israel is widely believed to be behind the attack. Israel has killed several other top Hezbollah commanders in Beirut, especially in the past two weeks, in addition to the attack that killed Nasrallah.

In Beirut’s southern suburbs, smoke rose and the streets were empty Saturday after the area was pummeled overnight by heavy Israeli airstrikes. Shelters set up in the city center for displaced people were overflowing. Many families slept in public squares and on beaches or in their cars. On the roads leading to the mountains above the capital, hundreds of people could be seen fleeing on foot, holding infants and whatever belongings they could carry.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas sent condolences to its ally, Hezbollah, and said “assassinations will only increase the resistance in Lebanon and Palestine in determination and resolve.”

News of Nasrallah's killing stunned travelers at Lebanon's only international airport, where hundreds of people were scrambling to leave the country despite limited flights. Some cried. Others talked on their phones in disbelief. One woman screamed: “No! It was just an announcement! No, he didn’t die!”

Iran’s supreme leader announced five days of public mourning after Nasrallah's death. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Nasrallah “the flag-bearer of resistance” in the region.

Hundreds of protesters meanwhile took to the streets of Tehran, waving Hezbollah flags and chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to Netanyahu the murderer.”

Thomas Juneau, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, said Iran will be under significant pressure to respond to Nasrallah’s killing without escalating violence in the region.

“Iran understands that its military options are limited, given the conventional military superiority of Israel and the U.S.” Juneau told The Associated Press.

Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Saturday that the elimination of Nasrallah was “not the end of our toolbox,” indicating that more strikes were planned. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called it “the most important targeted strike since the founding of the State of Israel.”

Israel has vowed to step up pressure on Hezbollah until it halts its attacks that have displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from communities near the Lebanese border. The recent fighting has also displaced more than 200,000 Lebanese in the past week, according to the United Nations.

The military said Saturday it was mobilizing three more battalions of reserve soldiers to serve across the country. It already sent two brigades to northern Israel to prepare for a possible ground invasion.

Shoshani, the army spokesperson, said Israel has inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah’s capabilities over the past week by targeting immediate threats and strategic weapons, such as larger, guided missiles. But he said much of Hezbollah’s arsenal remains intact and that Israel would continue to target the group.

Air raid sirens sounded across central Israel on Saturday afternoon, including at the Tel Aviv international airport, shortly after Netanyahu returned from a trip to the U.S.

The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen. It was not immediately known if the missile strike was aimed at Netanyahu’s flight.

The Israeli military updated guidelines for Israeli citizens, canceling gatherings of more than 1,000 people due to the threat.

Approximately 60,000 Israelis have been evacuated from their homes along the Lebanese border for almost a year. This month, Israel's government said halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the country’s north to allow residents to return to their homes is an official goal.

Orna Mizrahi, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based think tank Institute for National Security Studies and former intelligence analyst for the Israeli military and prime minister’s office, noted that Nasrallah was sometimes a “voice of reason,” interested in engaging Israel in a war of attrition and holding the militant group back from using the full force of their formidable arsenal against Israel.

Nasrallah's death could prompt some less senior members of Hezbollah to unleash much stronger weapons than have been used in the nearly yearlong exchange of hostilities, Mizrahi said. The biggest question mark right now, though, is how Iran will respond.

She said Nasrallah's death could provide a window of opportunity — while the organization is significantly weakened — for Lebanon to dilute Hezbollah’s influence, especially in the south, that threatens to drag Lebanon into a full-scale war with Israel.

On Saturday morning, the Israeli military carried out more than 140 airstrikes in southern Beirut and eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, including targeting a storage facility for anti-ship missiles in Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh. Israel said the missiles were stored beneath civilian apartment buildings. Hezbollah launched dozens of projectiles across northern and central Israel and deep into the Israel-occupied West Bank, damaging some buildings in the northern town of Safed.

The Israeli army again warned Lebanese residents to stay away from Hezbollah combat equipment and facilities, including in the southern suburbs of Beirut and southern Lebanon. The U.S. State Department issued an alert urging American citizens to leave the country.

A total of 1,030 people — including 156 women and 87 children — have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon in less than two weeks, the country’s health minister said Saturday.

Lidman reported from Tel Aviv. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell, Kareem Chehayeb and Ahmad Mousa in Beirut; Lujain Jo in Baabda, Lebanon; Nasser Karimi and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran; and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.