Eighteen suspects were shot and killed during a shootout with South African police in the Limpopo province, the police said on Friday.
Senior police officials were on their way to the crime scene in Makhado in South Africa's northernmost province, elite police unit the Hawks said in a statement, without providing further details.
Police spokesperson Brig Athlenda Mathe gave no more immediate information but local media reported that the 18 killed were in a gang suspected of robbing armored vans carrying cash for banks, a common and often violent crime in South Africa that regularly leads to deadly shootouts.
The shootings added to an horrific two days for the country after at least 74 people died in a fire in a rundown apartment complex in the city of Johannesburg in the predawn hours of Thursday.
