A man died and 11 others were seriously injured in an explosion at a scrapyard in the Bon Accord area of Pretoria on Wednesday, the Tshwane metro said.
”Preliminary indications show that there were explosives in the metals with which the men were working at the time of the explosion,” spokesperson William Baloyi said.
The blast rocked the area on Wednesday morning.
Police spokesperson Captain Lucas Sithole said forensics investigators had removed some of the debris to investigate what had caused the explosion.
He denied media reports that the explosion was caused by a mortar shell.
He said sections of the debris may have resembled that of a mortar bomb.
”So it’s just a rumour,” he said.
Beeld newspaper reported on Thursday that the explosion happened when the owner of the scrapyard threw a mortar to the ground to demonstrate that it was harmless.
An eyewitness was quoted as saying: ”I told [the owner] that those things [mortars] look very dangerous. I asked him how dangerous they are and he told me they are harmless … He took one and threw it to the ground and then there was a big bang.”
Inspector Nic de Jager, from the police’s explosives unit, said that someone might have found the mortars on the army’s training grounds in Murray Hill, north of Pretoria, and then sold them to the owner.
The man who was killed was an employee at the scrapyard. The owner was taken to a private hospital in a serious condition, reported Beeld.
Sithole said the dead man was not a local and police had to trace his family before they could supply any information on him.
The injured men were taken to the Pretoria Academic and the George Mukhari hospitals.
‘So far, they are in a serious but stable condition,” Sithole said. – Sapa