One victim jumped from a side window of the building, which had been set ablaze sending smoke billowing, said Prem Balram, a front man for Reaction Unit SA, a private emergency service, who was among the first on the scene.
"One of the three has just died on his way to hospital. The other two are at death's door," said Balram, adding that the suspects fled in a white car. "The suspects were Egyptian males. The local people here identified them."
South African police said the motive of the attack at a mosque on the Old Main Road in Ottawa in the KwaZulu-Natal province was unknown and they were investigating.
Africa's most industrialized country has a large expatriate community and attracts many tourists but has seldom been associated with Takfiri
...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who must be killed...militancy.
Balram said police had cordoned off the scene of the attack.
"There is a knife that was recovered at the scene, we believe the knife is suspected to have been used in the crime," the KwaZulu-Natal police spokeswoman Captain Nqobile Ngwala said at the scene.