1 Killed, 13 Injured as Police, Blacks Clash in S. Africa

A woman was killed and 13 other people were injured in riots Friday, mostly from shotgun blasts fired by police and civilians, police said.

The fatality occurred in the black district of Khuma, 100 miles southwest of Johannesburg. Two men and a woman also were injured in that clash, which happened when a mob firebombed police in a patrol car, officers said.

In Soweto, Johannesburg’s sprawling black township, factory workers wounded eight people with shotguns while repelling a crowd of blacks who intimidated them, the report said. It did not say whether the workers were white or black.

Black drivers rammed a local government building and the homes of three municipal workers with trucks and tractors in Sijadhutuka, a black township near Pietermaritzburg, capital of Natal province, police said.

Extensive damage was caused and 21 people were arrested, police said, but no casualties were reported.

In the black township of Kwandengezi, at Pinetown near Durban, police shot dead a man Thursday night when they fired on a crowd of 10 blacks “who were allegedly terrorizing residents in the township,” the South African Press Assn. reported Friday.