Seven suspects accused of killing South African police have been shot dead in a gunfight at a church, police say.<\/p>\n
Those killed in the shoot-out are thought to be part of\u00a0the armed gang that killed six in a raid on a police station in the country’s Eastern Cape province on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Ten suspects were also arrested at the church in Nyanga village, while others escaped, investigators said.<\/p>\n
Police say the gang were cornered as they hid in the church.<\/p>\n
National police commissioner Khehla John Sitole told a crowd outside the church on Saturday that\u00a0the police were determined to bring the alleged police attackers to justice.<\/p>\n
“We made a decision that this is not going to happen in South Africa where the state will be undermined by criminals,” he said, according to African outlet News24.<\/p>\n
Mr Sitole said police had confiscated firearms stolen in the police station raid and were still hunting other suspects that fled the church shoot-out.<\/p>\n
A police spokesperson had earlier said the church grounds were home to at least 100 women and children, who were not caught up in the crossfire.<\/p>\n
Dozens of police are killed each year in South Africa but Wednesday’s attack on a police station sparked national outrage.<\/p>\n
The armed robbers that burst into the police station near Mthatha opened fire on officers on duty, killing three instantly.<\/p>\n
An off-duty soldier was shot as the assailants fled, and the bodies of two other officers, taken hostage, were later found shot “execution style”, according to a government statement.<\/p>\n
The authorities said that the motives for the police raid were unknown, but that the gang was believed to have robbed a cash machine shortly before the attack, and then stolen 10 firearms and a police van.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seven suspects accused of killing South African police have been shot dead in a gunfight at a church, police say. Those killed in the shoot-out are thought to be part of\u00a0the armed gang that killed six in a raid on a police station in the country’s Eastern Cape province on Wednesday. Ten suspects were also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":404313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[17364,481],"class_list":["post-404312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-police-station-raid","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/404313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=404312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}