More than 170 people have been murdered in South Africa's Western Cape province over the past two weeks, according to South African news outlets cited by Independent Online.
The province, which includes Cape Town, has for years recorded among the highest murder rates in the country. Police statistics have repeatedly identified several Cape Town districts among the deadliest in South Africa.
Much of the violence in the province has been attributed by authorities to organized gang activity concentrated in specific townships and suburbs on the Cape Flats, where competition over drug markets and extortion has driven long-running conflicts between rival groups.
South African police have not released a breakdown of the recent figures or identified a single cause for the concentration of killings.
National murder statistics are published quarterly by the South African Police Service.