Police say four others were critically injured in the attack, which is being investigated as incident of taxi violence.

Eleven taxi drivers have been shot dead in South Africa after gunmen opened fire on a minibus carrying members of a taxi drivers’ association, police have said.

Police spokesman Jay Naicker said on Sunday the drivers were on their way home from the funeral of a colleague on Saturday evening when their vehicle was ambushed in KwaZulu-Natal province.

He added that four people were critically injured in the attack.

“We understand they were from the Gauteng taxi association. There has been a lot of taxi violence in the area but we are still investigating who the perpetrators were,” Naicker said.

South African news site News24 quoted Naicker as saying the police taxi violence unit had been dispatched to the scene of the shooting.

Rivalry between groups of minibus taxis over dominance on profitable routes sometimes spills over into deadly violence in South Africa.

Ten people were killed in Cape Town during one weekend in May as a result of taxi violence, according to local media.

In April, heavily armed gunmen stormed a taxi rank in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, killing one and injuring three more. Police arrested 16 suspects following the attack.