“We received a report of 17 (people) who died at a local pub in East London,” said Tembinkosi Kinana, a provincial police spokesman. “We are still investigating what happened.”
He said the victims were between the ages of 18 and 20.
Unati Binkose, an official from the Eastern Cape Provincial Community and Security Department, said the cause of the death was not overcrowding.
The regional local newspaper DispatchLive reports that “bodies are lying over tables, chairs and on the floor without obvious signs of injury”.
Images distributed on social media show bodies lying on the club floor without visible signs of injury.
Binkose said the dead were students who attended a party after high school exams.