World

Bomb Explodes In South Africa

August 25, 1998 / 6:35 PM EDT / AP

A bomb exploded inside a crowded South African Planet Hollywood, an American-owned restaurant, Tuesday night, killing one person and injuring 27, police said.

The explosion occurred at 7:20 p.m., when the restaurant was packed with diners, said Police Senior Superintendent John Sterrenberg.

A witness who had been at the ground-floor bar in the two-story restaurant described a horrific scene.

"I saw people without limbs," Bertie Liebenberg, who was visiting from Johannesburg, told the South African Press Association. "Decor on the ceiling came crashing down, and crashed onto people, tables and chairs."

The White House condemned Tuesday's bomb attack at a South African Planet Hollywood, an American-owned restaurant, but said it had no immediate evidence that it was politically motivated.

FBI agents who had been investigating the blast in Nairobi were expected to arrive later Wednesday, said National Police Commissioner George Fivaz.

Deputy White House press secretary Barry Toiv said U.S. officials would "cooperate closely" with the South Africans in their investigation of the blast inside the crowded Cape Town restaurant. One person was killed, 27 injured.

"We condemn in the strongest terms what appears to be an outrageous and despicable attack against innocent people," Toiv said.

Toiv would not comment on whether the attack may have been in retaliation for U.S. missile attacks last week on a supposed terrorist camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

"We're not going to speculate on that," he said. "We don't have any information the attack was politically motivated."

A caller to a Cape Town radio stationed claimed responsibility on behalf of a group called Muslims Against Global Oppression, according to Marianne Merten, a journalist at the station.

The State Department said the group was anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli. It was unknown to the department's counter-terrorism office until it staged a demonstration at the vacant Israeli diplomatic office in Cape Town in July 1997, officials said. The marchers shouted angry slogans aimed at Israel.

Some members also were among the 40 or so people who protested U.S. policies on Iraq and Israel during President Clinton's visit to Cape Town in March, U.S. officials said.