Johannesburg - A posse of South African farmers and army reservists tracked down a gang of alleged armed robbers in a rural manhunt and shot three of them dead, police said yesterday.
Civil rights activists expressed alarm that the killings could raise racial tensions and be part of a growing trend for citizens to take the law into their own hands.
The mainly white 100-strong band assembled hastily after an elderly farmer and his wife raised the alarm during an attack on their farm in the cattle-raising and maize-growing north-west.