SARAH BULLEN, Cape Town | Wednesday 10.30am
CAPE Town on Wednesday is still feeling the after shock of the St Elmo’s bomb blast after two of its larger hotels received bomb threats on Tuesday night. No bombs, however, were found.
The pipe bomb blast that destroyed St Elmo’s, a popular pizzeria in Camps Bay, injured 48 people on Sunday afternoon.
Bomb disposal units were on Tuesday night dispatched to the Peninsula Hotel and the Table View Hotel, which received threats between 7pm and 8pm.
Western Cape police spokesman Wicus Holtzhausen told ZA*NOW that the police are not drawing any link between the Camps Bay blast and the subsequent threats. He said that it is a common problem police face in the aftermath of a blast. “A bomb explosion also triggers some strange reactions in people that makes some just pick up the phone and call in a threat,” he said.
The Independent Newspapers’ group provincial head office, Newspaper House, in Cape Town’s city centre had to be evacuated late on Monday morning following a telephonic bomb threat.
Meanwhile Cape police are taking the unusual step of distributing pictures of various types of pipe bombs in a bid to boost awareness of security amoung Capetonians.
The bomb blast come at the start of Cape Town’s tourist influx and just before the start of the opening of the 1999 World Parliament of World’s Religions which kicks off on Wednesday. Holtzhausen said on Wednesday morning that police have made no arrests yet related to the bomb attack. The Beeld newspaper on Wednesday reported that a gang of blackmailers who attack restaurants and then afterwards demand protection money in mafia-style, could be assisting a terrorist group responsible for the latest spate of bombings. Meanwhile, of the 48 people injured in the blast, 16-year-old Olivia Milner remains in a critical condition. Milner, a grade 10 Camps Bay High School pupil lost her leg after she bore the brunt of the blast.
Milner’s other leg is broken in two places, she has massive soft tissue damage, serious burns all over her body and damage to her lungs and eyes.