South African police said on Sunday that 11 women have been found dead in the Ekurhuleni municipality east of Johannesburg over the past 10 weeks, with eight of the victims discovered this month.
The latest body was located around midday in an open veld in Ekurhuleni, police spokeswoman Brigadier Brenda Muridili told reporters. “A security company vehicle patrolling the area noticed the body and alerted the police,” she said.
Details about the woman’s identity, age and cause of death were not immediately available, the police statement said. The discovery followed the finding on Saturday of a semi-naked woman’s body near a cemetery in the same municipality.
Provincial police chief Tommy Mthombeni said that the victim found near the cemetery appeared to have been stoned to death, and that a post-mortem examination would determine the cause of death.
Police said a man linked to one of the killings was arrested almost 400 kilometres away after leaving the area. That arrest brings to four the number of people in custody over the series of killings, the police said. Authorities added that they had not yet linked the cases to one another.
Authorities told reporters that the other nine victims were mostly in their 20s and 30s, and that some had been stripped and showed signs of sexual assault.
The attacks come as gender-based violence remains a major concern in South Africa. The national GBV Command Centre reported receiving 6,782 distress calls from September 1 to 16, an average of 424 a day, a rise of 21 percent compared with the same period in August.
The details above were provided by South African police and by provincial police officials, and reported by international news agencies. For the police statement and further reporting see Channels Television and Punch.
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