A mother was forced to throw her young child from a burning building during rioting in South Africa set off by the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma.
Footage shot by media outlets captured the child being thrown from a building in the city of Durban that was on fire after ground-floor shops were looted.
The mother and child were later safely reunited.
In the video, a person was holding the baby on the first floor of the building while a group of people was standing on the ground floor, all set to catch the baby.
The person on the first floor carefully let the baby go, and the group standing down immediately caught the kid. Everyone was seen cheering as the kid was saved.
Though the video ended with a slight ‘happy ending’, the other visuals show the grim situation in the African nation.
In another video, visuals of a now-empty gun shop were shown; the gun shop was looted earlier, and nothing was left behind in the shop.
In the current situation, rioters and looters with guns on roads is a significant security concern for the riot-hit regions of South Africa.
The death toll climbed to 72 from rioting yesterday, with many people trampled to death during looting at stores, as police and the military fires stun grenades and rubber bullets to try to halt the unrest.
More than 1,200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of two provinces, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air yesterday and some COVID-19 vaccination centres were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations.
Many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic stampedes as thousands of people stole food, electric appliances, liquor and clothing from stores, police Major-General Mathapelo Peters said in a statement last night.
He said 27 deaths were being investigated in KwaZulu-Natal province and 45 in Gauteng province.
In addition to the people crushed, he said police were investigating deaths caused by explosions when people tried to break into ATM machines, as well as other fatalities caused by shootings.
The violence broke out after Zuma began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court on Thursday. He had refused to comply with a court order to testify at a state-backed inquiry investigating allegations of corruption while he was president from 2009 to 2018.
The unrest spiralled into a spree of looting in township areas of the two provinces, although it has not spread to South Africa’s other seven provinces, where police are on alert.”The criminal element has hijacked this situation,” Premier David Makhura of Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg, said.
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