Mass shootings inside two homes leave 15 women and two men dead in South Africa

Seventeen people, including 15 women, have been killed in two mass shootings that took place at two homes on the same street in a rural town in South Africa, police say.

A search was underway for the suspects, police spokeswoman Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said in a statement.

The victims were 15 women and two men, she said.

One other person was in critical condition in hospital.

That person was among four women, a man and a two-month-old baby who survived one of the shootings.

Authorities did not 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 on 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 on Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday at a collection of rural homesteads along a dirt road on the outskirts of the town according to police.

Residents sat on the road’s edge as police and forensic investigators blocked off areas with yellow and black crime scene tape and began their investigations.

National police commissioner General Fannie Masemola said he had ordered a specialist team of detectives to 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 spokeswoman Mathe said.

Local media reported that the people were attending a family gathering at the time of the shooting. Still, 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 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 - an average of more than 70 a day.