At least 10 males linked to Adelaide’s escalating African gang war have been arrested in the last week, as police crack down after a spate of home invasions involving machete-wielding thugs.
South Australia Police Assistant Commissioner Scott Duval said the arrests had been made by detectives from Operation Meld, a taskforce investigating conflict between the rival 051 and Killa Block Squad (KBS) gangs, which have members mainly from South Sudan, but also from Somalia and Liberia.
Mr Duval said on Wednesday that all 10 – aged between 15 and 26 and charged with offences including assault, robbery and carrying offensive weapons – were either members or associates of African gangs.
“There are periods in time when conflict is heightened,” he said.
“It would appear at the moment we have a rise in that type of offending between these groups.”
Another 16-year-old male was arrested on Wednesday hours after a violent alleged home invasion and stabbing in Gulfview Heights in the city’s northeast which police suspect is gang-related.
Four men described as slim and in their teens or early 20s allegedly broke into a home armed with knives and machetes and stabbed a boy, 17, and a woman, 53, and three of the alleged offenders are still at large.
“Witnesses state that four men entered the house using force and immediately slashed and stabbed a man inside,” Mr Duval said, adding that the use of weapons was “concerning”.
“The propensity for this type of violence is the reason we are committing so [many] resources to finding these people and holding them to account for their actions,” he said.
In an unrelated incident in nearby Parafield Gardens on Tuesday a group of four Aboriginal men stormed a home and attacked a man inside, and are still on the run, the Advertiser reported.
During the last week of September there were at least two home invasions involving African gang members with machetes, one in Eyre where a teenager was slashed in the face by masked thugs looking for his brother, and one in Kilburn where 10 to 15 armed males rampaged through the property.
Members of KBS are believed to have been involved in both incidents.
Header image: An African with an 051 necklace, left, and two males holding up a KBS T-shirt
