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CAPE TOWN (AFP) - South African Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete has blamed the Muslim vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) for the bombing late Tuesday of a community center. The methods used to cause the blast, which injured seven people, were the same as those used in a recent spate of blasts also linked to PAGAD, Tshwete told reporters Wednesday. He said that police had found at the scene of the blast, in the Muslim suburb of Athlone, "instruments identical" to those used by suspected PAGAD bombers in other blasts. The minister warned that PAGAD posed a serious threat and again blamed the four-year-old Islamic group for more than 110 bombings in and around the city, as well as for the murder of a city magistrate last week. Tshwete said the latest bomb proved the government's belief that the movement was targeting the state, which was too liberal for PAGAD's liking. The bomb, which was tied to a tree in front of the center, exploded some two minutes after Western Cape premier Gerald Morkel arrived to address a political meeting. "Obviously the bombers knew there would be a meeting and the police would be around that area," Tshwete said. "It confirms exactly what we are saying - in the firing line is the state. Everybody should be at war with PAGAD," he said. Addressing a special briefing in parliament, Justice Minister Penuell Maduna said that it was plain to "an obvious and keen observer of facts" that PAGAD was behind the bombing, but he admitted that finding proof was hard. "If you are looking for evidence such as a court of law would be looking for, you have a problem." As the frequency of the bombs have increased in the past two months, Maduna's ministry and the police have come under fire for failing to convict anybody for the blasts. PAGAD spokesperson Gulaam Allie Wednesday angrily denied the movement's involvement: "As yet, they [government] have given us not a shred of evidence linking PAGAD to any of these acts of terror but they have consistently accused us of these." "We have condemned them as acts of violence, as any act of terror and violence," he told public SABC radio. |
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