Police and Youths Clash Again Near Cape Town

Security police clashed again with anti-apartheid young people in a Cape Town suburb Wednesday, the day after police killed three youths throwing stones at a truck.

Witnesses in the mixed-race suburb of Athlone said a 17-year-old youth was shot in the back and legs during one of Wednesday’s clashes. He was hauled into the back of an armored personnel carrier as his mother pleaded to be allowed to take him to a doctor. Police were unable immediately to confirm the incident.

Tuesday night, three youths were shot to death in the town when police, hidden in cargo crates on the back of a truck, opened fire with shotguns on stone-throwing young people.

In other violence, police said they shot and killed two blacks in the Cape Town squatter camp of Crossroads during a stone-throwing and firebombing incident. And witnesses in the black township of Langa, near Cape Town, said security forces killed a 14-year-old girl among a group of blacks who appeared to be enforcing a boycott of white retailers by forcing other blacks to empty their shopping bags.

Biko Doctor Barred

In another development, the South African Medical Council barred from practice a government-employed doctor, Benjamin Tucker, because of his failure to properly treat black leader and political detainee Steve Biko in prison in September, 1977.

Biko died of brain injuries after he was assaulted by police in a Port Elizabeth prison cell. Tucker, the surgeon responsible for his welfare, signed medical reports that failed to mention his injuries and declared him fit to travel in the back of a Land Rover more than 600 miles to Pretoria, where he died.