Several killed in mass shooting at Soweto bar in South Africa

Fifteen people have been killed in a mass shooting at a bar in Soweto township near Johannesburg, police said Sunday.

Elias Mawela, the Gauteng police commissioner, said nine people were also being treated at hospitals for gun wounds.

Mawela said the incident happened shortly after midnight when gunmen opened fire on revelers who were enjoying themselves at a club in the Nomzamo informal settlement in Orlando.

"For now, we don't have details on the motive of the attack but as investigations progress, we are hoping we will get more information," he told local reporters at the scene.

He said the attackers used high-caliber fire and were apparently shooting randomly.

The incident comes two weeks after tragic deaths of 22 young people at a nightclub in the city of East London in the Eastern Cape province.

South Africa is one of the world's most violent countries with 20,000 people murdered every year, one of the highest per-capita murder rates globally.

Soweto, near Johannesburg, is the largest of the country's Black townships. They were the creations of white minority rule, which ended in 1994 but whose legacy of widespread poverty and youth unemployment persist nearly three decades later.

Local media reported that another shooting in a tavern in Pietermaritzburg, about 500 km southeast of Soweto, had killed four people overnight. A police spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation.