Scenes of quiet desolation after mosque killings

15 June 2018 - 07:00
By Aron Hyman
Zainab Bassa (red scarf), wife of Malmesbury mosque victim Ismail Bassa, 74, during prayers at her home on June 14 2018.
Image: Esa Alexander Zainab Bassa (red scarf), wife of Malmesbury mosque victim Ismail Bassa, 74, during prayers at her home on June 14 2018.

The man who killed two people in a mosque in Malmesbury outside Cape Town jumped onto a police bakkie and stabbed the windshield with a hunting dagger before police shot and killed him.

On Thursday morning‚ three blue shotgun shells lay in the mud on an open field in the Swartland town; and a few metres further on a man lay in the mud‚ his body being battered with icy rain from an Atlantic storm.

The man is believed to be a Somali and the Hawks have taken over the case. They were taking statements from members of Cape Town’s Somali community in a church next to the field‚ where forensic investigators were working on the scene.

One of the men told Times Select he was a family member of the attacker and that he did not know what the man was doing in Malmesbury as he was supposed to be in “hospital” somewhere in Cape Town.