Army is still on the streets, violent protests continue; hundreds injured VIDEO/PHOTO

Army is still on the streets, violent protests continue; hundreds injured VIDEO/PHOTO

In an attempt to suppress the violence, the South African authorities deployed the army on the streets of the cities where the fiercest riots were recorded, but despite that, shops and apartment buildings were set on fire during the day.

Among the victims is a six-month-old baby, who was hit in the head by a stray bullet, but also a man who bled from the wounds received with a knife.

Large number of people were injured.

According to local media, chaos reigns in the clinics, as protesters are constantly trying to break into the rooms where the injured are.

Suhail Esa, a city doctor, described the scenes over the weekend as a "look into hell" because his clinic was flooded with patients.

President Ramaphosa is supposed to address the nation at 8pm regarding the chaos across South Africa. In the wave of violence that followed the arrest of the former president, protesters looted shops, set fire to buildings and attacked passers-by.

During a week of violence, police failed to contain protests, which in most cases ended in looting and destruction of property. South African media report that intersections are blocked, as well as that trucks are burning in those places.

His supporters today robbed shops and caused a fire in a shopping center in the city of Pietermaritzburg, ahead of Zuma's appearance in court, local TV stations announced. Smoke from burning buildings rose into the air as goods from the devastated shops were scattered along the road in Pietermaritzburg in Zuma's home province of KwaZulu-Natal, but the incidents spread to Johannesburg as well.

NCA television channel showed today's video of the fire on the roof of the shopping center in Pietermaritzburg in the eastern part of South Africa, where Zuma will appear in court. The riots began last Wednesday, shortly after the arrest of Zuma, who was sentenced to 15 months in prison for refusing a court order to provide evidence in a high-level corruption investigation during his nine-year term, which lasted until 2018, as Reuters reported.

Zuma is also facing a separate lawsuit over a $ 2 billion arms deal from 1999, when he was vice president. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said days of protests, looting and riots in the country could lead to food and medicine shortages in the next few weeks.

He stated that the protests led to the cancellation of the efforts for vaccination against coronavirus in some parts of the country, and that they could lead to further disruption of the program just at the moment when the country was accelerating the pace of immunization, Reuters reported.