Gunmen Kill 12 at Church Service in South Africa

Unidentified gunmen killed 12 people at a church service, bringing to at least 70 the number of people killed since Friday in KwaZulu-Natal province, police said Tuesday.

The province is the scene of feuding between the African National Congress and the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party.

The gunmen, firing repeatedly into a hut, killed five children and seven adults taking part in a church service Monday night in a rural village, police said.

“The hut in which the church meeting took place was then set alight,” said police spokesman Capt. Dawood Kader. He said all the dead had not yet been identified.

Describing the massacre in which her two daughters were killed and she was wounded, Holisile Shezi said she had gone outside with her baby when the men approached.

“A man with a gun asked me whether I was [Joseph] Shezi’s wife, and I said ‘yes,’ ” she said from a hospital in Ixopo, about 15 miles northwest of Springvale, where the attack occurred.

She said the attackers asked for her husband and then demanded to know where his gun was. “I told him there is no gun in my place. . . . He then shot me, and I ran away,” she said.

Kader said the massacre appeared to result from a factional fight that “has nothing to do with politics.” But the African National Congress blamed Inkatha, which denied involvement.