Pretoria - Police Minister Bheki Cele on Monday said crime scene experts had recovered at least 130 used bullet casings of AK47 assault rifles at the Soweto tavern where patrons were shot on Sunday morning, leaving 15 dead.
“There were about 130 empty cartridges of AK47, which means that those people that were there really meant business of killing. In an AK47, at any given time you put 30 bullets in it, which means time and again, they would reload. There is suspicion that there were about three of those rifles among those five people that were identified there [assailants],” Cele said.
“But also, there were cartridges of pistols, the small guns. So, the group of people, for whatever reason … they intended to come here and do the damage that they did.”
The AK-47, officially known as the Avtomat Kalashnikova, is rated as the most widely used shoulder weapon across the world. It was developed in the then Soviet Union by Russian commander, Senior Sergeant Mikhail Kalashnikov, and is the originating firearm of the Kalashnikov family of rifles. It is a fully automatic assault weapon, meaning as long as the trigger is depressed and it has bullets, it will fire non-stop.
Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant General Elias Mawela said the fact crime intelligence in the province was not proactive before the attack did not mean there was no intelligence in the province.
“Intelligence is hard at work here in the province. All our operations are intelligence led. It doesn’t mean that if they missed that one, then intelligence doe not exist. It does exist, it does feed us with information. Certain things we want to reserve them because the more we reveal a lot, we are actually empowering the criminals,” said Mawela.
“They will forever counter what we want to do. Some of the tactical details, we prefer not to share.”
On Sunday, President Cyril Ramaphosa sent condolences to the affected families after two mass shootings on Saturday and Sunday, which claimed the lives of at least 20 people in Soweto and Pietermaritzburg.
Masked gunmen firing pistols at random burst into a crowded tavern in Soweto, Gauteng, slaying 15 people between the ages of 19 and 35, authorities confirmed.
In the suburb of Sweetwaters, Pietermaritzburg, assailants opened fire with a shotgun, killing four people and wounding eight others, also in a tavern.
“As a nation, we cannot allow violent criminals to terrorise us in this way, regardless of where such incidents may occur,” Ramaphosa said.
“As government, citizens and structures of civil society, we must all work together even more closely to improve social and economic conditions in communities, reduce violent crime and stamp out the illicit circulation of firearms.”
IOL