South Africa house party shooting kills 11 in KwaMakhutha near Durban

Capetown,UPDATED: Sep 23, 2026 15:58 IST

At least 11 people, including a woman believed to be pregnant, were killed and three others were injured after gunmen opened fire at a house party in South Africa on Tuesday night, police said. The attack took place in KwaMakhutha township, about 30 kilometres south of Durban on the country’s east coast.

Police said three men entered the house where people had gathered for a party and started shooting. Ten people, including the pregnant woman, died at the scene, while an 11th person was declared dead at a hospital. No arrests had been made till Wednesday, and police said they were searching for the gunmen.

Authorities did not immediately give details on the condition of the three injured people. Police said the motive for the shooting was not yet known, but added that some of those at the house were known to them as part of investigations into criminal activity. They said they could not share more details on those investigations.

"Although the motive of the shooting cannot be confirmed yet, (a) feud between rival groupings cannot be ruled out," police said. Thami Ntuli, the premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, told reporters at the scene that the killings were "really disturbing". He said there were known problems with drug dealing and illegal firearms in the largely impoverished community.

The attack is the latest in a series of mass shootings in South Africa. In June, multiple shooters killed 12 people in a poor neighbourhood in Johannesburg in an attack police linked to criminal gangs. Two mass shootings carried out by multiple gunmen two weeks apart in December had killed 21 people. South Africa has very high levels of violent crime, with official police statistics recording 5,427 homicides in the three-month period between April and June, an average of nearly 60 a day. Shootings are the most common form of homicide in the country, and police and crime experts have long said that one of the biggest problems is the large number of illegal firearms in circulation.

Earlier this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa authorised soldiers to be deployed on the streets in some areas to combat violent crime, in what critics said was an admission that police were failing. Soldiers were sent to areas around Johannesburg, the city of Cape Town and Eastern Cape province on the south coast, but not to KwaZulu-Natal, where the latest shooting happened.

At the scene, the bodies of some victims were laid out on the ground outside the small house and covered with white sheets before being taken away on stretchers to pathology vans. Police sealed off the neighbourhood with yellow tape while forensic investigators examined the scene, and were also looking into whether a car set on fire near the house was linked to the shooting. The attack left 11 people dead, three wounded, and police hunting for three suspects as the investigation continued.

With PTI Inputs

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