Josh Sullivan, 45, was taken at gunpoint last Thursday while he was delivering a sermon at the Fellowship Baptist Church in Motherwell outside the coastal city of Gqeberha.

South African police said today that the previous day, officers acting on a tip-off had approached a house in the KwaMagxaki district of Gqeberha.

The suspects tried to flee in a vehicle as they approached, opening fire on officers, said the police statement.

In the ensuing shootout, the three suspects were fatally wounded and Sullivan was rescued, “miraculously unharmed”, from the same vehicle, the statement added.

Sullivan arrived in South Africa with his family from Tennessee in November 2018, according to his personal website.

There were more than 17,000 kidnappings in South Africa in the 2023/2024 financial year, an 11% increase over the previous year, according to police statistics.