4 Killed, 24 Hurt in Bomb Blast in S. African Enclave

A bomb hidden in a shopping bag exploded in a crowded butcher shop Saturday morning, killing four people and injuring 24 others, in Walvis Bay, a South African enclave in Namibia.

Another bomb, exploding earlier Saturday in a plastic trash bin outside a post office, rocked the quiet suburbs of Lakeside and Muizenberg, outside Cape Town. The only casualty was the postmaster, who was treated for several cuts and for shock.

The blast at Walvis Bay, a South African naval and fishing port of 440 square miles on the Atlantic Coast, came a day after the Aug. 1 date proposed by Pretoria for the implementation of U.N. independence plans for Namibia slipped by without action.

The South-West Africa People’s Organization, which has fought a 20-year guerrilla war against South African rule in Namibia, or South-West Africa, has demanded the incorporation of Walvis Bay, an old British naval station given to Pretoria in 1910, into Namibia upon the territory’s independence.

The explosion demolished the butcher shop, and witnesses said that many more might have been killed if a delivery of meat made minutes before had not absorbed most of the blast.

The government Bureau for Information said that two men and two women were killed and five of the injured are in critical condition. Most of the victims were blacks or mixed-race Coloreds.

The bomb was apparently carried into the shop by a customer who bought meat, placed the purchase in the bag and left the bag in the store, the bureau said.

Although there was no immediate indication of who carried out the attack, several recent explosions in Windhoek, the Namibian capital 160 miles east of Walvis Bay, have been blamed on the South-West Africa People’s Organization, known as SWAPO, which has long hit stores and other civilian targets in its fight against South African rule.

President Pieter W. Botha suggested in March that Aug. 1 be set as the date to begin implementing the long-delayed U.N. plan for Namibian independence. But he made this conditional on an agreement first for the withdrawal of 35,000 Cuban troops based in neighboring Angola.

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha said Friday that Pretoria’s initiative had failed because Angola had refused to discuss Cuban withdrawal, and American mediation efforts are now at a standstill.

Pretoria took over Namibia from Germany in World War I and has continued to administer the sparsely populated but mineral-rich territory despite repeated calls by the United Nations for its independence. South Africa now appears intent on handing over power to a multiracial but right-of-center coalition of political parties that lack the mass support that SWAPO seems to enjoy.