Two dead and child wounded after gunman open fires at memorial service in South Africa

A group of mourners leaving a memorial service for a local politician in South Africa were subject to a horror attack as a gunman fired shots.

Police say at least two men were killed and five others injured. At least one of those wounded in the shooting in Katlehong township, located southeast of Johannesburg, was a child, police said.

The suspected gunman is said to have turned himself in and remains in custody.

In a statement, the South African Police Service said that the shooting is being investigated by a political killings task team.

According to local media, the two victims were members of the youth league of the African National Congress (ANC) party, the largest party in South Africa’s Parliament which describes itself as a “disciplined force of the left”.

It is also reported that the memorial service that they attended was for a woman who was a local ANC leader and was fatally shot this month in a killing suspected to be ‘politically motivated’.

South Africa will hold local elections on 4 November to decide which parties control municipal councils.

Police have yet to confirm the identity of the victims and only said they had attended a memorial for a “member of a political party”.

Inside South Africa’s gun crime problem

South Africa has high rates of gun crime, including shootings related to local political rivalries.

A recent report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found that there had been 43 killings in South Africa this year that were suspected to be politically motivated.

In September, a total of at least 38 people were killed and nearly 30 wounded in three separate mass shootings in the country.

There is no standard global definition of mass shootings. In South Africa, police define a mass shooting as when three or more people are shot in a single attack.

Authorities say many of the mass shootings are linked to criminal gangs fighting turf wars or using violence to establish control over communities and areas. The mass killings also tend to happen in the country’s poorest communities

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