Two people died while over 100 were left homeless when fire engulfed hundreds of shacks in three separate incidents in South Africa’s Cape Town.
The emergency service revealed that the tragic incident happened over the weekend.
According to them, “Two of the fires occurred on Saturday evening and one in the early hours of Sunday morning.”
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“An adult male and female sustained fatal burn wounds and were declared dead by medics at one of the informal settlements,” the Cape Town’s fire and rescue spokesman Jermaine Carelse said in a statement.
The biggest fire which happened around 2:30 am on Sunday engulfed over 150 shacks leaving over 1,000 people displaced in the Mfuleni settlement, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) southeast of Cape Town.
“However, the cause of the fire is still under investigation,” Carelse said.
Shack fires are common in South Africa and are a perennial threat to the impoverished residents of the sprawling informal settlements near major cities throughout the country.
