Land Mine Kills 5 Blacks, Wounds 2 in S. Africa

Three women and two infants were killed and two men were injured Sunday evening when their car detonated a land mine on a farm road in South Africa’s eastern Transvaal province, the government’s Information Bureau reported. All of the victims were blacks.

The blast occurred near Nelspruit, 180 miles east of Johannesburg, an area where rebels of the outlawed African National Congress have been active recently.

“Horrific” was the only way to describe the incident, a bureau spokeswoman said. “In what cause were these innocent women and children murdered?”

Later Sunday, a white woman and her 9-year-old son were seriously injured in a second land-mine explosion only a few miles away as they returned home from church, the bureau reported.

More than a dozen land mines have exploded in eastern Transvaal in recent months, but police said earlier that they had found and arrested those responsible.

Most of South Africa’s northeastern and eastern border regions have been tense since a mine killed six whites on a game farm in northern Transvaal last Dec. 15, and clashes between African National Congress insurgents and government forces occur frequently in those remote areas. Security forces promised farmers that they would bolster patrols to prevent further infiltration, and authorities have claimed considerable success in recent clashes with the insurgents, killing more than 20.

Three other blacks died in the country’s continuing political violence, according to the Information Bureau, bringing to an end a relative lull of more than a week.

In another development, Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha criticized Friday’s approval by the U.S. Senate of economic sanctions against South Africa. He said that the measure, if finally enacted after being reconciled with an even stronger measure voted by the House, would encourage radicals to create a society here “in which no American would live voluntarily.”

Botha told state-run South African Broadcasting Corp. that the planned sanctions would hamper the government’s efforts to negotiate a constitution bringing blacks into the political system.

“They are encouraging the inciters of violence,” Botha said.