Capetown Restaurant Bombed
A home-made bomb blasted a packed pizza parlor at a popular South African beach resort on Sunday. Over 40 people were wounded in this, the latest bomb attack to hit the Capetown area.
"It was a pipe bomb hidden in a plastic bag under one of the tables in the middle of the restaurant," police spokesman Neville Malila told Reuters.
He said there had been no claims of responsibility, no warning had been given, and the restaurant had not received any threats. Two of the wounded were critically hurt.
The bomb exploded just after 1400 GMT in the popular St. Elmo's Pizzeria, overlooking the crowded Camps Bay beach, on the Atlantic Ocean south of Capetown.
Doctor Gerald Dalbock, who helped treat the traumatised victims at the scene, said the two people on the critical list had been flown to local hospitals.
"One patient has sustained major trauma to a lower limb," he said.
Another of the victims was a six-year-old boy.
Shards of glass littered the road next to the beach where, only four days earlier, British tycoon Richard Branson had wined and dined Capetown's elite to celebrate the start of his Virgin Atlantic airline's weekly flights to the city.
A spokeswoman for the City Park Hospital, which just 15 months ago dealt with most of the victims of another bomb at the U.S. franchised Planet Hollywood, in which two people were killed and 26 injured, said 20 victims of the Camps Bay blast had been brought in for treatment.
"We have taken five patients in overnight, The rest have been sent home. One child is in [an ooperating] theater now" she said.
Capetown was virtually in a state of siege a year ago after the Planet Hollywood blast which was followed by a series of other explosions, most of which were attributed to Moslem vigilant group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD).
But the city has been relatively quiet since January when police launched a major offensive, code-named Operation Good Hope, against the plague of urban terrorism that included direct attacks on police stations.
PAGAD denied the charges, blaming the police for mounting a campaign against them -- accusations bolstered by the discovery in January this year of a National Intelligence Agency operative among a PAGAD group which was arrested for possession of explosives.
On Friday the police scored their first victory when a prominent PAGAD member was convicted of murdering four people in a shootout near the city's Waterfront tourist area in January.
No one has claimed responsibility for Sunday's bomb yet, but regional Safety and Security Minister Mark Wiley told reporters he would not be surprised if the blast was associated with the conviction.
The blast, which follows another at one of the city's gay bars less than a month ago, could not have come at a worse time for Capetown as the city gears up to receive what it hopes will be a flood of tourists to celebrate the millennium.
"Theconomy of the Western Cape has been damaged," Wiley told reporters at Sunday's blast scene.
Capetown Tourism chief Sheryl Ozinsky deplored the bombing as an attack on innocent people.
"It is a cowardly act," she told Reuters. "Our sympathies go out to the victims and their families.
"It is undermining the livelihood not only of the many people who live here but also to the sense of freedom we have fought for. People are afraid to go out here," she added.