Sharpeville massacre survivors launch legal claim

Survivors and relatives of people killed when apartheid police opened fire on a 1960 protest have launched legal action against the South African government, Lawyers for Human Rights said Thursday.

The group said the plaintiffs will seek to overturn the Indemnity Act, legislation passed a year after the Sharpeville Massacre that prohibited legal action by survivors and dependants of those killed.

Lawyers for Human Rights said the law effectively extinguished claims arising from the massacre and infringed the plaintiffs' constitutional right to access courts.

Apartheid-era police records indicate 69 people were killed and at least 180 wounded in the massacre. Lawyers for Human Rights said later research found at least 91 people were killed and more than 238 wounded.

Apartheid officially ended with South Africa's first all-race election in 1994.