Crime spooks 'not to blame'

MASSACRE: FAMILY 'DISPUTES' LIKELY LED TO KILLING OF 18. Police to deploy more men, vans to crime scene.

- Brian Sokutu

Police crime intelligence is not to blame for not predicting the massacre of 18 family members in the Ngobozana village of Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape, says an expert.

While stressing the importance of police stepping up an intelligence-driven strategy to address crime in South Africa, a criminologist yesterday said the killings could have been fuelled by the proliferation of illegal firearms, family and group feuding.

Police Minister Senzo Mchunu, his deputy, Cassel Mathale, national police commissioner Fannie Masemola, and Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane, met the bereaved families..

In what Mabuyane described as "a barbaric destruction of a family, resembling a war", killers over the weekend targeted two homesteads mowing down 18 in the Eastern Cape's remote town triggering a manhunt.

In an address to the local community, Mchunu said the stench of blood still hung heavy at the crime scene "where the defenceless were killed, with the majority being women".

"The killers were patient enough to ensure all were killed.