S. Africa bombing probably revenge
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - The bombing that killed one person and
injured 27 at a Planet Hollywood restaurant probably came in
retaliation for U.S. attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan, a top South
African official said today as FBI agents rushed to the site.
However, the Tuesday evening attack appeared to have been carried
out by a local group, another South African official said, noting that
pipe bombs were common in the area.
Shards of broken glass and blood covered the interior of the restaurant
today and a half-dozen bouquets were scattered on its bloodied steps
along Cape Town's waterfront, a popular tourist destination.
A spokesman for Muslims Against Global Oppression denied that his
group had anything to do with the blast Tuesday evening despite a claim
of responsibility by a caller to radio station.
''Anyone can call a radio station and say they are from MAGO,'' Moain
Achmad, the group's coordinator, said Wednesday.
He condemned the bombing and speculated it was carried out to
discredit Islam and scare people away from a march his group was
organizing on the U.S. Embassy on Saturday to protest the U.S.
attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan.
In Washington, the State Department said the group was both
anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli. Some members were among the 40 people
who protested U.S. policies on Iraq and Israel during President
Clinton's visit in March.
The White House condemned the bombing but said it had no
information it was ''politically motivated.''
South African Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi said the bombing
was probably linked to the U.S. cruise-missile attacks, South African
Broadcasting Corp. radio reported. The U.S. attacks on suspected
terror sites were themselves retaliation for the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
FBI agents who had been investigating the bombing of the U.S.
Embassy in Nairobi were invited down by South Africa and expected
to arrive later today, said National Police Commissioner George Fivaz.
''These people have expertise about similar attacks all over the world,''
Fivaz said as he visited the wrecked Planet Hollywood.
President Nelson Mandela's spokesman, Parks Mankahlana, said
police believed a pipe bomb was responsible.
''These pipe bombs ... are a very common phenomenon in the Western
Cape, which might be an indication that we are not dealing with an
international network but a local group,'' he said.
A Muslim vigilante organization, People Against Drugs and
Gangsterism, has been widely blamed for pipe bomb attacks in recent
years targeting suspected gangsters and drug dealers in the area.
Police initially reported the one person killed was a woman, but later
said it was a man.
Five members of a family from Hampshire, England, were among the
injured.
''We had just arrived and were being shown our seats when the whole
place was torn apart,'' Iris Giddings, 65, the only member unharmed,
was quoted as saying by Press Association, the British news agency.
''There was a flash and then everything went dark as the ceilings and
walls seem to come down upon us. I was knocked down and saw my
family all lying injured before me. It was one of the most terrible things I
could imagine seeing.''
Doctors amputated a foot from Mrs. Giddings' 8-year-old
granddaughter, Aura. Her 3-year-old brother, Jacob, was in intensive
care with spine injuries.
Planet Hollywood's bar, covered in blood, bore the brunt of the blast,
which cracked walls, shattered windows and lifted part of the ceiling off
the restaurant. A small crater in a corner of the bar marked the
apparent spot where the bomb went off.
A glass booth holding a mannequin of Arnold Schwarzenegger - one of
Planet Hollywood's founders - was shattered at the restaurant entrance.
Nico Smuts, spokesman for Leisurenet, the franchise holders of Planet
Hollywood, said the Cape Town branch was wholly South
African-owned.
By The Associated Press
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