JOHANNESBURG: Two bar shootings, one in a township close to Johannesburg and another in eastern South Africa, left 19 dead, police said on Sunday.
In Soweto, 15 people were killed after as they enjoyed a night out, police said, when assailants drew up in a minibus taxi and began randomly firing at bar patrons.
In the eastern city of Pietermaritzburg, police reported four people were killed and eight wounded during a shootout in a bar after two men fired discriminately at customers.
Police sources said it was too early to say if the assaults were in some way connected but observed their similarity.
In Soweto, Johannesburg’s largest township to the southwest of South Africa’s economic capital, police were called to the scene shortly after midnight.
“When we arrived at the scene, 12 people were dead with gunshot wounds,” local police officer Nonhlanhla Kubheka told AFP.
She added 11 people were taken to hospital. Three died shortly after arrival.
There were no details regarding the assailants.
“Nobody has been arrested. Officers are still on site. They came and shot at people who were having fun,” said Kubheka, commander of the Orlando police station, the Soweto district where the shooting took place.
Hundreds of people were massed behind police cordons Sunday as police investigated, AFP journalists reported. Only a small poster showing beer prices at the bar could be seen outside the establishment.
Police led away relatives of those caught up in the drama who tried to approach the crime scene.
In Pietermaritzburg, four people were killed and eight wounded in a shootout around 8:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) which left eight others injured, local police spokesman Nqobile Gwala said.
Two men drove up, entered the bar and “fired random shots at the patrons,” before fleeing, Lt. Col. Gwala said.
“A total of 12 people were shot. Two people were declared dead at the scene and the other two died in hospital.
“Another eight people are still in hospital after they sustained injuries.”
The dead were aged between 30 and 45.
The two incidents come a year after an outbreak of the worst violence the country has seen since the end of the apartheid era three decades ago brought democracy.
Last July saw large scale rioting and looting, ransacking of shops, a wave of arson attacks and attacks on infrastructure and industrial warehouses leading to more than 350 deaths and several thousand arrests with the country already in the throes of a major COVID-19 wave.
Most of the unrest occurred in Johannesburg and the eastern province of Kwazulu-Natal as South Africans protested the sentencing and incarceration of former President Jacob Zuma.
Zuma was sentenced after refusing to testify on corruption charges during his 2009 to 2018 tenure.
Two bar shootings across South Africa kill at least 19: police say
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Two bar shootings across South Africa kill at least 19: police say
- Police say too early to tell if the assaults are connected but observed their similarity
Trump: US ‘will run’ Venezuela, send in oil companies
PALM BEACH, United States: President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States will “run” Venezuela and tap its huge oil reserves after snatching leftist leader Nicolas Maduro out of the country during a bombing raid on Caracas.
Trump’s announcement came hours after a lightning attack in which special forces grabbed Maduro and his wife, while airstrikes pounded multiple sites, stunning the capital city.
Trump did not go into detail what he meant but told a press conference in Florida: “We’re going to be running it with a group.”
“We’re designating people,” he said, mentioning that cabinet officials standing with him would be in charge.
In another surprise, Trump indicated that US troops could be deployed in Venezuela.
The US is “not afraid of boots on the ground,” he said.
Although the operation is being framed as a law-enforcement action, Trump made clear that regime change and Venezuela’s oil riches are the major goals.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure,” he said.
“We’ll be selling large amounts of oil,” he said.
The 79-year-old Republican posted a picture of Maduro in custody on a US naval ship wearing a blindfold, handcuffs and what looked like noise-canceling ear muffs. He and his wife were being taken to New York to face narcotics and terrorism charges.
Trump dismisses opposition leader
US-backed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, posted on social media: “the hour of freedom has arrived.”
She called for the opposition’s candidate in the 2024 election, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, to “immediately” assume the presidency.
But Trump scotched any expectation that Machado should emerge as Venezuela’s new leader. She doesn’t have “support or respect” there, he said.
He indicated he could instead work with Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodriguez, saying “she’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
Trump also made clear that the US presence is unlikely to be short.
“We’re there now, but we’re going to stay until such time as the proper transition can take place.”
The United Nations chief said he was “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected.”
China, a backer of Maduro’s hard-left regime, said it “strongly condemns” the US attack, while France warned that a solution for troubled Venezuela cannot “be imposed from outside.”
Black-out and bombing
Venezuelans had been bracing for attacks as US forces, including the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, spent months massing off the coast.
Caracas residents woke to explosions and the whir of military helicopters around 2:00 am (0600 GMT). Airstrikes hit a major military base and an air base, among other sites, for nearly an hour, AFP journalists said.
The bombing turned out to be only part of the more ambitious plan to topple Maduro and bring him to US soil to face narco-trafficking charges.
Trump said the assault began with a partial blackout caused by US “expertise.”
The top US military officer, General Dan Caine, said 150 aircraft took part in the operation, supporting troops helicoptering in to seize Machado with the help of months of intelligence into the leader’s daily habits — down to “what he ate” and what pets he kept.
Maduro, 63, and his wife “gave up” without a struggle and there was “no loss of US life,” he said.
Maria Eugenia Escobar, a 58-year-old resident of La Guaira, near the heavily bombed main airport, told AFP that the blasts “lifted me out of bed, and I immediately thought, ‘God, the day has come.’“
Within hours of the operation, Caracas had fallen eerily quiet, with police stationed outside public buildings and a smell of smoke drifting through the streets.
Shifting justifications
The US and numerous European governments already did not recognize Maduro’s legitimacy, saying he stole elections both in 2018 and 2024.
Maduro — in power since 2013 after taking over from leftist mentor Hugo Chavez — long accused Trump of seeking regime change in order to control Venezuela’s huge oil reserves.
Trump said the extraordinary snatching of a foreign country’s leader was justified because of his claim that Venezuela is responsible for mass death from drugs in the United States.
But Trump has given a variety of justifications for the aggressive policy toward Venezuela, at times stressing illegal migration, narcotics trafficking and the country’s oil industry.
He had previously avoided openly calling for regime change — likely mindful of his nationalist political base’s dislike for foreign entanglements.
Several members of Congress quickly questioned the legality of the operation. However, Trump’s key ally Mike Johnson, Republican speaker in the House of Representatives, said it was “decisive and justified.”
