Watch: South African mother throws daughter from burning building into the arms of passerby

In a desperate attempt to save her child, a mother threw her toddler from a burning building in South Africa. The jaw-dropping moment caught on camera, now has left people around the world stunned. Luckily, the baby was caught by passersby standing below and later was reunited.

The mother, Naledi Manyoni, was filmed by BBC cameraman Thuthuka Zondi throwing her daughter, Melokuhle, from a burning building amid ongoing riots in Durban. The terrifying clip showed the woman being perplexed by all the smoke and commotion as she approaches the ledge of the high-rise building.

Footage showed dozens of people rushing to the scene to help the mother is distress and assuring her to throw the 2-year-old child into their arms. After throwing her daughter, the woman was seen holding her head in shock, as the good Samaritans caught the child.

Watch the moment here:

[WATCH] Toddler rescued from a fire. Looters started a fire after stealing everything from the shops on the ground floor. They then set fire to the building, affecting apartments upstairs. Neighbours caught the little girl 🥺#ShutdownKZN watch @BBCWorld for more pic.twitter.com/LTMTAa7WAz

— Nomsa Maseko (@nomsa_maseko) July 13, 2021

This was too painful to watch💔💔 pic.twitter.com/WL964kZUWH

— Katlie_Moo▪️ (@Katlie_Moo) July 13, 2021

Manyoni recalled outside the building as her daughter sat on her shoulders. “She kept saying, ‘Mama you threw me down there.’ She was scared,” she told Reuters. They stood on the street before burned and ransacked shops.

Captured one those images that will forever live in my heart. Amongst the chaos there were heroes today, they caught her and she is fine. @nomsa_maseko pic.twitter.com/YX8KTap8ct

— Thuthuka Zondi (@ThuthukaZ) July 13, 2021

Scores of people in South Africa have been killed and hundreds arrested in riots, following the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma last week for failing to appear for a corruption enquiry. The protests, which started in Zuma’s home province KwaZulu-Natal on Saturday, soon turned into mass looting, arson and riots in provincial Durban and Johannesburg, the commercial hub of the African nation.

The mother Manyoni later told The Guardian that she had no choice but to release her grip on her daughter and hope that she would be caught by people waiting below. “They kept screaming ‘throw her’,” she said. Manyoni and her fiancé lived on the 16th floor of that building that was set on fire by looters at ground level amid the unrest in the country.

“All I could do was trust complete strangers,” the 26-year-old woman told BBC News later. Recollecting the day’s ordeals, she said that the lift was not working because of the fire, so Manyoni frantically ran down the stairs with her baby. However, because of the fire she couldn’t reach the ground floor.

It was then when she “managed to squeeze through to a balcony area on the second floor”, where she resorted to faith in strangers to make sure her daughter lived. Firefighters arrived at the scene about 20 minutes after passersby had started rescuing others residents with ladders, which is how the mother was reunited with her daughter, the report added.