At least 17 young people were found dead at a nightclub in a township in South Africa\u2019s southern city of East London on Sunday, police said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a report about 17 [people] that died in a local tavern in Scenery Park, which is based in East London,\u201d said Thembinkosi Kinana, a police spokesperson. \u201cWe are still investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the victims were aged between 18 and 20 years old.<\/p>\n
The Eastern Cape provincial community and safety department official Unathi Binqose, speaking from the scene, ruled out a stampede as a cause of the deaths.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to believe it\u2019s a stampede as there are no visible open wounds to those dead,\u201d said Binqose.<\/p>\n
A regional newspaper, DispatchLive, reported \u201cbodies are lying strewn across tables, chairs and on the floor; with no obvious signs of injury\u201d.<\/p>\n
Unverified pictures shared on social media showed bodies with no visible signs of injuries, lying on the floor of the club.<\/p>\n
Local television showed police officers trying to calm a crowd of parents and onlookers gathered outside the club in the city, which lies on the Indian Ocean coast, nearly 620 miles (1,000km) south of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents whose children did not sleep home are gathered here and they want to enter the tavern to look for their loved ones,\u201d said Binqose.<\/p>\n
He said he understood the patrons were students \u201ccelebrating pens down, a party held after writing [high school] exams\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least 17 young people were found dead at a nightclub in a township in South Africa\u2019s southern city of East London on Sunday, police said. \u201cWe got a report about 17 [people] that died in a local tavern in Scenery Park, which is based in East London,\u201d said Thembinkosi Kinana, a police spokesperson. \u201cWe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":23886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[1648,4899,287,9331,9171,6083,5241,8342,1362,11525,11294,1023,5423,3684,421,6736,5349,244,1213,8125,6047,9539,5140],"class_list":["post-23885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-africa","tag-african","tag-children","tag-city","tag-crowd","tag-dead","tag-died","tag-indian","tag-indian-ocean","tag-injuries","tag-injury","tag-johannesburg","tag-lies","tag-london","tag-police","tag-school","tag-social-media","tag-south-africa","tag-south-african","tag-stampede","tag-students","tag-victims","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}