BBC- The death toll in South Africa has risen to 72 as violence continues across the country following the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.

Crowds looting and setting alight shopping centres clashed with police in several cities on Tuesday.

The BBC filmed a baby being thrown from a building in Durban that was on fire after ground-floor shops were looted.

A day earlier, 10 people were killed in a stampede during looting at a shopping centre in Soweto.

The military have been deployed to help police overstretched since the unrest began last week.

South African police said in a statement they had identified 12 people suspected of provoking the riots, and that a total of 1,234 people had been arrested.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called it some of the worst violence witnessed in South Africa since the 1990s, before the end of apartheid, with fires started, highways blocked and businesses and warehouses looted in major cities and small towns in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces.

Ministers have warned that if looting continues, there is a risk areas could run out of basic food supplies soon – but have ruled out declaring a state of emergency.

The child was caught by a crowd of people who rushed to help those trapped in the apartment block in the central business district of Durban, a coastal city in KwaZulu-Natal, on Tuesday afternoon.

Those stealing from shops on the ground floor of Smith Street had started the fire which spread, affecting those living upstairs.

The BBC’s Nomsa Maseko in Durban says that after catching the baby, the passers-by and neighbours rushed to get ladders to help other residents, including children, escape.

The mother was reunited with her baby, but was too emotional to talk. The rescue services arrived after about 20 minutes to help douse the fires.

More than 200 shopping malls had been looted by Monday afternoon, Bloomberg news agency quoted the chief executive officer of Business Leadership South Africa, Busisiwe Mavuso, as saying.

Several shopping centres in Soweto – South Africa’s largest township which was once home to Nelson Mandela – have been completely ransacked, with ATMs broken into, restaurants, stores selling alcohol and clothing shops all left in tatters.

Soldiers working with the police managed to catch a few rioters; in total almost 800 have been arrested, but law enforcement remains heavily outnumbered, he reports.

In KwaZulu-Natal – where livestock has also been stolen – the unrest continues with ambulances coming under attack by rioters in some areas, South Africa’s TimesLive news site reports.

Video footage shows that a blood bank was looted in Durban as Mr Ramaphosa addressed the nation on Monday night.

By Farouk Chothia, BBC News

The catalyst was the arrest last week of Zuma, with his supporters blockading major roads – the economic arteries of the nation – as they demanded the release of their political hero.

Low income levels and unemployment – standing at a record high of 32.6% among the workforce and even higher at 46.3% among young people – are seen as the ticking bombs that have exploded.

Many South Africans have been shaken by the riots that have swept through Zuma’s political heartland of KwaZulu-Natal and the economic hub of Gauteng.

And many feel that his successor as president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has failed to provide decisive leadership – either to calm anger over Zuma’s imprisonment or to reassure South Africans that they will be safe.

Mr Ramaphosa was accused of belatedly deploying troops – and only 2,500 of them compared with the 70,000 he deployed to enforce a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 last year.

But there is no agreement over the deployment – the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) opposition party has opposed it, saying the solution lies in “political intervention and engagement with our people”.

Many residents in affected areas have remained at home, and some have formed what local media call “defence squads” to protect their neighbourhoods and businesses as looting and burning continues.

There is no doubt that the unrest is the biggest security challenge that Mr Ramaphosa has faced since he became president in 2018 after ousting Zuma. It is bound to worsen the economic crisis, already hit by the pandemic, given the scale of destruction.

He was convicted of contempt of court last month after failing to attend an inquiry into corruption during his presidency.

The 79-year-old, who denies corruption, was given a 15-month prison sentence. He handed himself in to police last Wednesday.

He is hoping to get the sentence rescinded or reduced by the country’s constitutional court. However, legal experts say his chances of success are slim.

Police Minister Bheki Cele has warned that “no amount of unhappiness or personal circumstances from our people gives the right to anyone to loot, vandalise and do as they please and break the law”.

There has been some concern over fake news online fuelling the unrest, while the governing African National Congress (ANC) had already revealed it was looking into tweets sent by Zuma’s daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla.

State Security Minister Ayanda Dlodlo said officials were “busy sorting fact from fiction” after receiving information that former security agents linked to Zuma had instigated the violence.

The head of MI5 is to urge the public to be as vigilant about threats from “hostile states” as from terrorism.

These include disruptive cyber-attacks, misinformation, espionage and interference in politics – and are usually linked to Russia and China.

In a speech on Wednesday, Ken McCallum will say these “less visible threats… have the potential to affect us all”.

He will say these threats are affecting UK jobs and public services and could even lead to a loss of life.

The head of the Security Service wants to challenge the idea that activity by so-called “hostile states”, usually taken to mean primarily Russia and China, only affects governments or certain institutions.

Instead, he will argue, in an annual threat update, that the British public are not immune to the “tentacles” of covert action by other states.

In the speech at MI5’s Thames House headquarters, Mr McCallum will warn the “consequences range from frustration and inconvenience, through loss of livelihood, potentially up to loss of life”.

Terrorism has dominated MI5’s agenda for the last two decades. That danger has not gone away but MI5 is now also dealing with a broader range of threats as well.

These include cyber attacks. China is often accused of seeking to steal information for commercial gain but Russia and China have both been accused in the last year by Western governments of targeting vaccine research – allegations they have denied.

The warning comes amid growing fears that cyber-attacks by states, or by criminal groups sheltered by states such as Russia, could take down critical infrastructure like water or power or healthcare leading to a loss of life.

In 2017, a cyber-attack linked to North Korea took down parts of the NHS, affecting appointments, and a recent attack linked to criminals in Russia took down a pipeline supplying half the fuel to America’s East Coast.

As well as claims it may have tried to increase scepticism about the Oxford vaccine, Russia was directly accused by the government of trying to influence the 2019 general election and was linked to interference in the US 2016 election.

The government faced criticism for delays in releasing the so-called Russia Report from the Intelligence and Security Committee which looked at this.

When it was released last summer, it said there had been a failure to investigate interference from Moscow in the Brexit referendum. Moscow has dismissed the accusations.

Traditional espionage – spies stealing secrets – also continues, but sometimes in a more modern way.

One example comes with foreign spies targeting people over professional networking sites like LinkedIn, often associated with China.

Fake profiles are used to try and lure them into passing over sensitive information. MI5 recently launched a campaign called “Think before you Link” to raise awareness.

“We have seen over 10,000 disguised approaches from foreign spies to regular people in the UK, seeking to manipulate them,” Ken McCallum will say, referring to a five-year period.

“UK victims of state espionage range way wider than just government. We see the UK’s brilliant universities and researchers having their discoveries stolen or copied; we see businesses hollowed out by the loss of advantage they’ve worked painstakingly to build.

“Given half a chance, hostile actors will short-circuit years of patient British research or investment. This is happening at scale. And it affects us all. UK jobs, UK public services, UK futures,” the MI5 head will say.

‘If you are working in a high-tech business, or engaged in cutting-edge scientific research, or exporting into certain markets, you will be of interest – more interest than you might think – to foreign spies,” he will say, arguing people should be “switched on” rather than scared.

Mr McCallum will call for a response across government and society, including increased public vigilance.

“We must, over time, build the same public awareness and resilience to state threats that we have done over the years on terrorism,” he will say.

The government is currently consulting on new legislation to counter hostile state activity, including a requirement for those working for foreign governments to register and updates to the laws surrounding espionage and secrets.

This is the second annual threat update since Mr McCallum became Director General of MI5 in April 2020.

He is also expected to address the current terrorism threat – including Islamist extremism and Northern Ireland activity as well as that from the far right, which MI5 recently became involved in monitoring.

Other subjects he will cover include the withdrawal of UK forces from Afghanistan. Some analysts worry it could lead to a resurgence from Al Qaeda, which plotted the September 2001 attacks from the country.

The MI5 chief is also likely to reiterate concerns over the spread of end-to-end encryption by tech companies such as Facebook.

The companies say their technology helps protect users’ privacy by ensuring no one but the sender and recipient can read a message, but the authorities argue this will pose a challenge to public safety because they can no longer demand companies hand over the contents.