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South Africa Police Kill 10 Suspected Robbers In Foiled Money Heist

  The number of suspected robbers killed during a foiled cash heist in South Africa rose to 10, the police watchdog said Monday, in one of the … Continue reading South Africa Police Kill 10 Suspected Robbers In Foiled Money Heist

By Ronke Sanya Idowu
Updated February 22, 2022
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A bullet riddled vehicle is stationed in the middle of the street, part of the crime scene after a botched cash-in-transit attack in Rosettenville, on the outskirts of Johannesburg on February 21, 2022, resulting in two South African police officers being airlifted with chest wounds. South Africa’s already alarming number of murders and rapes kept increasing at the end of 2021, the police minister announced February 18, 2022. From October to December, the country suffered an average of 74 murders and
A bullet-riddled vehicle is stationed in the middle of the street, part of the crime scene after a botched cash-in-transit attack in Rosettenville, on the outskirts of Johannesburg on February 21, 2022. PHOTO: GUILLEM SARTORIO / AFP

 

The number of suspected robbers killed during a foiled cash heist in South Africa rose to 10, the police watchdog said Monday, in one of the country’s deadliest shootouts in recent years.

Police Minister Bheki Cele had earlier reported that police killed eight suspects planning to attack a vehicle carrying cash.

But the country’s Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) spokeswoman, Grace Langa, updated the toll to 10, with five police officers wounded.

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Police acted on a tip-off and deployed a helicopter to fend off a planned cash-in-transit robbery in southern Johannesburg’s suburb of Rosettenville.

The suspects fired at the police chopper and wounded one of the pilots, forcing police to shoot back.

“They shot the helicopter before anybody did anything to them,” Cele told reporters at the scene of the crime. “They shot the pilot.”

The minister said a gang of about 25 gunmen from the southeastern KwaZulu-Natal province as well as from neighbouring Zimbabwe and Botswana were involved in the attempted robbery.

Eight of the surviving gang members were arrested and the rest are on the run, he said.

Robbers often target vehicles transporting cash in crime-ridden South Africa.

Police last week reported that 60 cash-in-transit robberies were committed between October and December 2021, a slight drop from the same period in 2020.

AFP

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