A 23-year-old mother and her two-year-old daughter were murdered in Cape Town over the weekend. This brings the number of female children killed in the Western Cape to 22 this year.

Their bodies were found in bushes near their home in Atlantis on Monday. Nothing was stolen and the circumstances surrounding their murders are still unknown.

Local councillor Barbara Rass said Octavia de Bruyn and little Cleo had left home on Saturday to visit her friend where she usually gets her hair braided. But she never made it back home.

Police sources said that possible suspects have been questioned.

According to police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Andrè Traut “the circumstances surrounding the double murder are still under investigation‚ and although progress is being made‚ no one has been arrested as yet.”

Rass claims there have been two similar murders in Atlantis in the past four years: one where a mother and her child were murdered and another where an eight months pregnant woman was murdered.

“The police are busy working hard on the case this time. We want the same attention to be given which was given to Franziska’s and to Courtney’s case‚” said Rass.

“The same attention must be given to all the women and children who are being murdered now. Every day there is a women murdered‚ every day there is a child murdered‚” she said.

Western Cape MEC for community safety Dan Plato said he would raise the incident and the “unsolved cases” with the provincial police commissioner.

“I have faith in the police and the community supporting the police that these murders will not go by unpunished. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the brutal killings in Atlantis and each and every case of violence towards women and children in the province‚” said Plato.