The body of a tenth woman has been found in South Africa amid police investigations into the murders

The body of a tenth woman has been found in South Africa amid police investigations into the murders

Author, Alex Phillips

Posted 4 minutes ago

Reading time: 2 minutes

Police in South Africa say they have found another body in a suburb of Johannesburg, bringing the number of women found dead there in recent months to ten.

The body was found on Saturday morning, and was identified by a friend who had been with her at a bar the previous evening.

The local police chief said his forces did not rule out the possibility that a serial killer was on the loose, pointing to similarities between the ten deaths in Ekurhuleni, in addition to another case in Soweto.

These deaths sparked a nationwide outcry over the extent of violence against women in South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world.

The last body was found in a cemetery in the Tembisa neighbourhood, northeast of central Johannesburg.

Police issued a statement shortly afterwards, saying crime scene investigators were on the scene collecting evidence. Officials have not yet announced the identity of the victim.

The woman's friend told national broadcaster SABC that she recognized her friend's clothes she was wearing the night before, when she was shown a photo of the body.

Wiping her tears, she added: “I don’t know what to say to her children. This is painful.”

Gauteng Police Chief Tommy Mthombini said it was too early, at this early stage of the investigation, to determine whether the woman's death was linked to the other deaths.

He told reporters that the other victims shared “similar characteristics” indicating a common “homicide method,” which would allow police to determine whether the latest death was linked to the other cases.

“At the moment, we cannot rule out the presence of a serial killer, but we cannot be certain,” Lieutenant General Mthombini said.

South Africa has one of the highest murder rates, with 5,427 people killed between April and June this year alone.

But the nature of the recent murders around Johannesburg is what has left many women there experiencing the shock of the increasing death toll.

The other 10 bodies have been found in similar conditions since July. Most of them were found in Kempton Park, a neighborhood adjacent to Tembisa.

Many of the bodies were young women, and almost all of the victims were subjected to severe violence before their deaths.

These deaths have increased pressure on the national government, less than a year after ministers declared gender-based violence a national disaster.