CAPE TOWN (AFP) - Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said Friday that a bombing campaign in Cape Town did not have the beginnings of a civil war like the one in Algeria.

"The Algerian situation is totally different - the scope, the depth of the problem and the support of the masses for the people carrying out the bombings and the terror attacks," he told a media briefing.

"What we have here is not that widespread."

President Thabo Mbeki and two of his cabinet ministers this week blamed some 20 bombings in the city in the past two years on a Muslim group and warned that if they were not stopped, South Africa could slide into war.

The president Thursday said there were sinister similarities between the local situation and the start of the war in Algeria.

Algeria's civil war, which broke out in 1991, has left an estimated 100,000 people dead.

The People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) - blamed for the blasts - started out as vigilantes trying to clean up their communities, like the Algerian revolutionaries did, Mbeki said.

He said the local group wanted to destabilize the country.

Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete warned that Islamic "militancy" might spread throughout South Africa.

But Pahad, himself a Muslim, said: "It is wrong to think of this as an Islamic threat. This is a small group who happens to purport to be Muslim.

"They do not even have the support of the community they claim to be fighting for. They won't be able to sustain themselves for as long as they have in Algeria."

Pahad said he doubted PAGAD had overseas backing and that Sudan had denied claims that members of the movement were trained there.

The bombings, which began on the Cape Flats in 1996 and spread to the city two years later, have become more frequent in recent weeks and put Capetonians on edge.

To date, nobody has been convicted for the bombings and government has failed to produce proof to back up their claims that it is the work of PAGAD's armed wing.

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