At least 20 teenagers were found dead at a nightclub in a predominantly black suburban neighborhood in South Africa’s (south) East London city, the state security official said on Sunday.
“The number has risen to 20, three of them died in hospital. But there are still two who are in critical condition,” Weziwe Tikana-Gxothiwe, head of the state security department, told local television. The first toll, provided by the state police chief Thembinkosi Kinana, noted that 17 people were killed in an incident at a nightclub in Scenery Park in east London.
“We are still investigating the circumstances of this incident,” Kinana added. The delegate said the victims were between the ages of 18 and 20.
Unathi Binqose, an official with the Department of Security and Community for the Eastern Cape province, ruled out the possibility of a fight as the cause of the deaths.
“It’s hard to believe it was a fight as there were no visible signs of injury in the dead,” Binqose, who was reached by phone at the scene, told AFP. Local regional newspaper DispatchLive reported “corpses strewn on tables, chairs and the floor and no obvious signs of injury.”
Photos shared on social media, whose authenticity cannot be verified, showed bodies strewn across the floor of the venue, with no visible signs of injury. Local television broadcast footage of police trying to calm a crowd gathered outside a bar in this Indian Ocean town, about 1,000 kilometers south of Johannesburg.
“Parents whose kids don’t sleep at home are here and they want to join the club to search for their loved ones,” Binqose said. The official stated that the customers, according to him, were students who “had a party after the written exams”.
source: Noticias
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