Number of suspects killed during foiled CIT heist rises to 8

The number of would-be robbers killed during a foiled cash-in-transit heist in Rosettenville rose to 8, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) said on Monday.

Police Minister Bheki Cele earlier confirmed that eight suspects were killed during the shootout.

Ipid spokesperson Grace Langa initially released an update saying the toll had increased to 10, with five police officers wounded. She later clarified that eight people had died, while two were in a critical condition.

“12 rifles were found on the scene and about 100 bullets were found on the scene,” said Langa in a statement.

According to Cele, about 25 suspects were involved in the shootout after being cornered by police officers in their safe house in Rosettenville.

“As we were releasing the crime stats last Friday, we were under attack of the cash heists that keep going up in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. We don’t have too many groups that are dealing with this matter. There were about 25 of them, eight of them are dead and eight are arrested,” Cele told Newzroom Afrika earlier on Monday.

“Surprisingly, without fail, except one who comes from Botswana, they all come from Zimbabwe and KwaZulu-Natal. Four of them are from KwaZulu-Natal, the rest are from Zimbabwe and one from Botswana. They’re well armed and have AK47s, which means they [mean] business. The surprising thing is the one who shot at the helicopter and injured the pilot assistant. We are working with heartless people that are prepared to kill. There are five cars that have been hijacked.”

The rest of the suspects are on the run.

Gauteng police commissioner Elias Mawela said they had been monitoring the suspects since last week. This after investigations revealed that the group had been monitoring a money truck for some time.

“Our team was monitoring them from last week. They didn’t commit the crime then, but decided to do it today and our team was right behind them. When they saw us, they rushed out to their safe house, that’s where our team, highly trained, dealt with them. These guys are real, hardcore criminals. The number of unlicensed and illegal rifles is about eight,” he told the news channel.

According to Netcare 911’s Shawn Herbst, two police officers were also shot during the incident.

“Shortly after 4pm, Netcare 911 received information regarding a shooting, possibly a hostage situation, at a location near the South Rand Hospital. When medics arrived on scene, there was a full gun fight that had broken out between the suspects, SAPS and JMPD. Two police officers have been shot, and found in a critical condition. Due to the nature of their injuries, they were airlifted to specialist hospitals in Gauteng,” Herbst told the news channel.

Deadly violence keeps rising in South Africa

The country already alarming number of murders and rapes kept increasing at the end of 2021, the Bheki announced in a briefing on Friday.

From October to December, the country suffered an average of 74 murders and 122 reported rapes every day.

The number of murders jumped 8.9 percent compared to the same period one year earlier.

The 6,859 killings also marked an increase from the previous three months, when 6,163 people were killed.

That earlier figure already represented a worrying rise, which Cele at the time had blamed on deadly riots in July that left more than 350 dead.

“Murder remains worryingly stubborn,” he said on Friday.

The deaths in the last three months of the year included 902 women and 352 children. Taken together, nearly 700 more women and children were killed than in the previous three months.

Rapes, chronically under-reported, were officially counted at 11,315 — up from 9,556 the previous quarter.

That means a rape was reported to police every 12 minutes.

Cele insisted that violence against women was a top priority for police, saying more than 90,000 officers had received training on helping victims of sexual violence.

Additional reporting by AFP