(East London) The bodies of 17 youths, who died without apparent injuries, were discovered on Sunday in an informal night bar in a township in East London, South Africa, local police said who are investigating the cause of these mass deaths.
Posted at 7:43 a.m.
Updated at 1:06 p.m.
Four other young people who were in this establishment then died in hospital, according to local authorities. A previous report put the death toll at 20.
A crowd of people, including parents whose children are missing, gathered outside the bar in a residential area as mortuary vehicles took away the victims, according to an AFP journalist.
Senior government officials quickly rushed to the scene, including National Police Minister Bheki Cele, who broke down in tears as he walked out of the morgue where the bodies were deposited.
“It’s a terrible scene to watch,” he told reporters. “They are quite young. When you are told they are 13, 14 and you go there (to the morgue) and see them. It breaks “. The victims are thirteen boys and eight girls.
Near the morgue, a couple who lost their 17-year-old son confide in their distress.
“Our son was there, he died there. This child, we didn’t think he was going to die this way, he was a humble, respectful child,” said his mother, Ntombizonke Mgangala, standing next to her husband.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is in Germany to attend the G7 Summit, offered his condolences to the bereaved families. He said he was concerned about “the circumstances in which these young people gathered in a place which, on the face of it, should not have been accessible to minors”.
“It’s unbelievable, it’s incomprehensible, losing twenty young people in this way,” said the head of government of the Eastern Cape province, Oscar Mabuyane, in shock, who came to the scene of the tragedy in the morning, a simple building surrounded by individual houses.
birthday ribbon
PHOTO REUTERS
Empty liquor bottles, wigs and even a pastel purple ribbon reading “Happy Birthday” littered the dusty street outside the two-storey Enyobeni Tavern, according to Unathi Binqose, a government security official who arrived at the scene at dawn.
The victims were discovered in the early hours of the day in a makeshift bar in Scenery Park township, East London.
“We continue to investigate the circumstances of these deaths,” only told AFP a spokesman for the provincial police, General Thembinkosi Kinana, without venturing to express a hypothesis on the causes of their death.
A provincial health services official, Unathi Binqose, ruled out the possibility of a stampede or crowd movement.
Cause of death still unknown
The causes of death of these young people are still unknown. They were attending a party celebrating the end of their school year.
According to a local newspaper, the Daily Dispatchthe bodies were strewn between tables and chairs, with no apparent signs of injury.
“At this time, we cannot confirm the cause of death,” health ministry spokesman Siyanda Manana said. The bodies were taken to the state morgue. »
Police Minister Bheki Cele was due to go to the scene of the tragedy.
Nightclub owner Siyakchangela Ndevu told a local broadcaster he was summoned to the scene on Sunday morning.
“I’m not sure what happened yet. When I was called this morning I was told that the bar was too full and some people tried to force their way in. »
Local television broadcast looped images of the crowds of families and onlookers gathered around this bar in East London, a city of one million people on the Indian Ocean, some 700 km south of Johannesburg.
Many informal drinking establishments – nicknamed “shebeens” or “taverns” – are authorized or tolerated in the townships of large South African cities, these disadvantaged neighborhoods once reserved for non-whites before the end of apartheid. But regulations on the legal drinking age are not always enforced.
Authorities are now considering overhauling liquor licensing regulations in a country that is among the continent’s biggest alcohol consumers.