The number of dead found at a night bar in East London, South Africa, is 20, a provincial security service official said.
“Three injured people died in hospital, and two remain in very critical condition,” Weziwe Tikana-Gxothiwe, head of the provincial government’s security service, told local television.
The bodies, aged in their 20s, were discovered in a night bar in a township in East London, South Africa, local police said on Sunday.
No visible injury
A provincial health services official, Unathi Binqose, ruled out the possibility of a stampede or crowd movement.
“It is difficult to think that it is a stampede, because no victim has visible open wounds,” he told AFP by telephone from the scene of the incident.
According to the local newspaper DispatchLive“the bodies are scattered, across tables, on chairs and on the ground”, without “any apparent sign of injury”.
On social networks, some mentioned the possibility of gas poisoning or collective poisoning.
Local television broadcast looped images of the crowd of families and onlookers gathered around this nightclub in East London, a city of one million people located on the Indian Ocean, some 700 km to the south from Johannesburg.