South Africa Zuma riots: Death toll mounts amid looting

0
94

By BBC

The death toll in South Africa has risen to 72, after violence engulfed parts of the country after the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.

This includes 10 people killed in a stampede during looting on Monday night at a shopping centre in Soweto.

The BBC filmed a baby being thrown from a building in Durban that was on fire after ground-floor shops were looted.

The military has now been deployed to help the police overstretched since the unrest began last week.

South African police said in a statement that they had identified 12 people suspected of provoking the riots, and that a total of 1,234 people had been arrested.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called it some of the worst violence witnessed in South Africa since the 1990s, before the end of apartheid, with fires set, highways blocked and businesses and warehouses looted in major cities and small towns in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces.