CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A mass shooting carried out Saturday by multiple suspects in an unlicensed bar near the South African capital left at least 12 people dead, police said. The victims included three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
Another 13 people were wounded and being treated in the hospital. Police didn’t give details of the ages of those who were injured or their conditions.
Police adjusted the death toll after they said a 12th victim died in the hospital.
The shooting happened at a bar inside a hostel in the Saulsville township west of the administrative capital of Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday. Ten of the victims died at the scene and two others died at the hospital, police said.
The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said they were searching for three male suspects.
“We are told that at least three unknown gunmen entered this hostel where a group of people were drinking and they started randomly shooting,” police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC. She said the motive for the killings was not clear. The shootings happened at around 4.15 a.m., she said, but police were only alerted at 6 a.m.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, authorities say.
There have been several mass shootings at bars — sometimes called shebeens or taverns in South Africa — in recent years, including one that killed 16 people in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022. On the same day, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in another province.
Mathe said that mass shootings at unlicensed bars were becoming a serious problem and police had shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
Recent mass killings in South Africa have not been confined to bars, however. Police said 18 people were killed, 15 of them women, in mass shootings minutes apart at two houses on the same road in a rural part of Eastern Cape province in September last year.
Seven men were arrested for those shootings and face multiple charges of murder, while police recovered three AK-style assault rifles they believe were used in the shootings.
AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
A man sits outside a scene where the bodies of the victims of a mass shooting were found, at a bar near Pretoria, South Africa, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/STR)
Forensic personnel is seen at a scene where bodies of the victims of a mass shooting where found at a bar near Pretoria, South Africa, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. (AP Photo)
Police officers carry the body of a person on a stretcher after a mass shooting at a bar near Pretoria, South Africa, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025. (AP Photo)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia unleashed a major missile and drone barrage on Ukraine overnight into Saturday, after U.S. and Ukrainian officials said they’ll meet Saturday for a third day of talks aimed at ending the nearly 4-year-old war.
Russia used 653 drones and 51 missiles in the wide-reaching overnight attack on Ukraine, which triggered air raid alerts across the country and came as Ukraine marked Armed Forces Day, the country’s air force said Saturday morning.
Ukrainian forces shot down and neutralized 585 drones and 30 missiles, the air force said, adding that 29 locations were struck.
At least eight people were wounded in the attacks, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko said.
Among these, at least three people were wounded in the Kyiv region, according to local officials. Drone sightings were reported as far west as Ukraine’s Lviv region.
Russia carried out a “massive missile-drone attack” on power stations and other energy infrastructure in several Ukrainian regions, Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, wrote on Telegram.
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant temporarily lost all off-site power overnight, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday, citing its Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi.
The plant is in an area that has been under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that energy facilities were the main targets of the attacks, also noting that a drone strike had “burned down” the train station in the city of Fastiv, located in the Kyiv region.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said its air defenses had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight into Saturday.
Russian Telegram news channel Astra said Ukraine struck Russia’s Ryazan Oil Refinery, sharing footage appearing to show a fire breaking out and plumes of smoke rising above the refinery. The Associated Press could not independently verify the video.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces later said Ukrainian forces had struck the refinery. Ryazan regional Gov. Pavel Malkov said a residential building had been damaged in a drone attack and that drone debris had fallen on the grounds of an “industrial facility,” but did not mention the refinery.
Months of Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries have aimed to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue the war. Meanwhile, Kyiv and its Western allies say Russia is trying to cripple the Ukrainian power grid and deny civilians access to heat, light and running water for a fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing” the cold.
The latest round of attacks came as U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisers and Ukrainian officials said they’ll meet for a third day of talks on Saturday, after making progress on finding agreement on a security framework for postwar Ukraine.
Following Friday’s talks, the two sides also offered the sober assessment that any “real progress toward any agreement” ultimately will depend “on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace.”
The statement from U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as Ukrainian negotiators Rustem Umerov and Andriy Hnatov came after they met for a second day in Florida on Friday. They offered only broad brushstrokes about the progress they say has been made as Trump pushes Kyiv and Moscow to agree to a U.S.-mediated proposal to end nearly four years of war. Zelenskyy wrote on X on Saturday that he had been given an update over the phone from Florida.
Separately, officials in London said the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany would participate in a meeting with Zelenskyy in London on Monday.a
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Workers and military inspect Ukrainian Fire Point's Flamingo missiles during handover to the military in an undisclosed location in Ukraine Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
