A mother in South Africa’s Durban threw her 2-year-old daughter to safety in order to escape a burning high-rise building in the city amid unrest in the city. The incident was captured in a video, reported by Reuters. 

Naledi Manyoni, the 26-year-old mother, told news agency Reuters that she was on the 16th floor when the fire started on Tuesday, after which she had run down the stairs with her 2-year-old daughter. 

She said, she made her way to a ledge above the street outside the building and tossed her girl to a group of people standing below, Reuters reported, as bystanders cried out in consternation.

“After throwing her, I held my head in shock, but they caught her,” Manyoni said, talking to Reuters when she was standing outside the building while her daughter was sitting on her shoulders.

Manyoni said, “She kept saying, ‘Mama you threw me down there.’ She was scared.”

“What was important was for my daughter to be out of that situation… I couldn’t escape alone and leave her behind,” the 26-year-old said as the daughter wearing a red coat and hood babbled and clapped her hands.

The mother-daughter duo was standing on the street before burned and ransacked shops as South Africa is witnessing the worst protests since the first all-race election in 1994 that ended decades of apartheid rule and made the nation an international pariah.

At least 72 people have died in protests in South African after President Jacob Zuma surrendered on July 7 to police to serve a 15-month sentence. This came after he had repeatedly refused to appear before a special commission, which was investigating corruption during his nine-year presidency that ended in 2018.

The violent unrest, which started in Jacob Zuma’s home province KwaZulu-Natal on Saturday, has turned into mass looting, arson, and riots in provincial Durban and Johannesburg.

The nationwide death toll included 10 killed in a stampede at a shopping mall south of Johannesburg, Gauteng Premier David Makhura said, The Washington Post reported.