A South African baby was born with a bullet wound on Thursday, after her pregant mother was shot during a botched car hijacking.

The shooting happened as police launched a national drive to arrest criminals, seize unlicenced firearms and recovery stolen goods.

The baby was delivered by emergency caesarian section shortly afterwards.

Police said on Friday that the infant was in good health after receiving only a minor flesh wound.

But her mother, Leslie Ellerbeck, 23, was still recovering in intensive care.

Reports say that armed men ordered her out of her car while she was driving in a Johannesburg suburb, and shot her when she was slow in getting out from behind the wheel.

The bullet passed through her womb, grazing the unborn baby's buttock.

Crackdown

Police have arrested nearly 2,000 people in recent days in a prelude to Operation Crackdown, their latest anti-crime initiative.

The police have also recovered more than 200 stolen vehicles, as well as large amounts of illegal drugs.

National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi said many of the offenders arrested had been wanted for serious offences.

Police raids targeted high-crime areas.

In the shack settlement of Kathrada Park near Johannesburg, 1,800 police surged through the streets on foot, on horseback and in vehicles

"I was so terrified with all these helicopters flying overhead," one resident told journalists.

South Africa still has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.

The murder rate in South Africa dropped last year from 59 to 55.3 per 100,000 of the population, the government said last month.

Murders nevertheless remain nine times more common in South Africa than in the United States.

Analysts blame the traumatic history of the transition from apartheid to a mult-racial society, combined with the large numbers of illegal weapons circulating among poorer communities which have gained little from the move to democracy.