Police were alerted to two white males ”acting suspiciously” leaving the area near Soweto, Johannesburg, where a bomb was found shortly before midnight on Tuesday, police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi said on Wednesday.
Nine other devices were detonated around the sprawling suburb, killing a woman and seriously injuring her husband.
”We think we know who did this,” Selebi told Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa).
”We think that the people who did this wanted to send a message. In fact, the members of the public who reported the first one that was detonated reported two white males who acted suspiciously, who after they left the petrol station, the police found the bomb.”
”This is a big organisation, we have attempted in the past to control this, to make sure that these bombs don’t explode,” he said.
The police would do everything in their power to make sure more bombs did not explode. ”We calculate that there are many more bombs than those that have exploded. It’s a policing matter, it’s a matter that we have to deal with and spend almost all of our time to deal with,” Selebi said.
According to Johannesburg police representative Director Henriette Bester, the explosive device that killed the women had been placed under the railway line, near the Protea South station. The explosion left a 30 centimetre-deep, one metre-wide hole and sent a mass of twisted metal hurtling into the shack about 500 metres away, killing the 42-year-old woman.
Police have not yet released the dead woman’s name. Her 51-year-old husband was seriously injured by debris and was admitted to Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital. Their two daughters, aged 16 and 10, escaped unhurt.
Bester said no-one has claimed responsibility for the blasts, that have cut rail access between Soweto and Johannesburg. Police bomb disposal units at the explosion scenes have not yet said what type of explosives were used. A press conference has been scheduled for later this morning.
Police said an ”improvised” explosive device was found at a petrol station on the Old Potch Road in the Dlamini suburb and was defused by the bomb disposal unit.
The first explosion was at five minutes to midnight last night and ripped through a mosque in Dlamini. A wall was extensively damaged. Four explosions followed shortly afterwards on the railway track about 400 metres from the New Canada Railway station.
Then, two bombs exploded at the Midway railway station and two on the Lenasia railway lines.
Police had sealed off the roads around the mosque on Wednesday morning.
Metrorail representative Lilian Mofokeng said the damage to the railway lines appeared to be extensive. Repair crews were on site but were waiting for police to complete their preliminary investigations before starting repairs. Mofokeng said train services along the Midway, Naledi and Oberholzer lines would be severely affected. Service to Naledi, Langlaagte and Midway was suspended and trains from Oberholzer to Johannesburg were to be routed via Randfontein until further notice.
A shuttle service was being set up to link Lenz and Houthuizen. Trains from Lenz would run via Vereeniging and another shuttle service would link Langlaagte, Faraday and Westgate stations. More trains had also been scheduled along the Vereeniging-Meyerton route.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) condemned the blasts in a statement signed by Johannesburg party leader Mike Moriarty.
”These are cowardly and outrageous acts of pathetic and hopeless people,” he said. ”These acts must be condemned. We hope that the police will make an early breakthrough and stamp out the perpetrators. We urge all Johannesburg’s citizens to unite in rejection of this violence and we call upon anyone with information to assist the police.
”Our thoughts, prayers and sympathies are with the family of the one known victim at this time.”
Meanwhile, the aftershocks from the bombs were felt on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as investors took fright after the explosions.
”We’re going to see a flat to negative open. There’s a little bit of caution in the market after the lacklustre performance on the Dow last night, obviously this has been heightened by the Soweto explosions,” said one trader.
The explosions sent the rand to its weakest level against the dollar in just over a week. – Sapa, Reuters, M&G Online reporter