21 people killed in tavern shootings over the weekend

 At least 21 people were killed over the weekend as gunmen opened fire on three taverns in South Africa, in what the police described as “random” shootings.

According to Elias Mawela, police commissioner for Gauteng province, the attackers armed with rifles and pistols opened fire in the Orlando East bar in the township of Soweto in the early hours of Sunday, killing 15 people and wounding nine, police said.

“You can see by the way the bullet cartridges are cast around that they were just shooting randomly,” said Elias Mawela, police commissioner for Gauteng province.

The men opened fire around half an hour after midnight in what appeared to be a random shooting, killing 12 people on the scene and injuring 23. Three more people later died at a hospital, the police said. They said that those killed were between the ages of 19 and 35.

Police confirmed a second apparently random shooting hours earlier, at around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, in a tavern in Pietermaritzburg, which saw four people killed and eight wounded.

Officers said they did not believe the two shootings were linked. The killers from both incidents are on the run, according to police, who said it was not clear how many attackers were involved in either shooting.

In yet another tavern shooting over the weekend, gunmen killed two people and injured four on Friday night in the Katlehong township.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has condemned the killings, describing them as “unacceptable and worrying.”