S. Africa Raids Kill 3, Mozambique Says

South African commandos, apparently hunting insurgents of the African National Congress, raided the Mozambican capital of Maputo early Friday and killed three people, Mozambique’s official AIM news agency reported.

Four attacks, all near the presidential palace in Maputo’s well-to-do Polana district, were carried out simultaneously about 3 a.m. by heavily armed, four-man squads. They got away by boat after blowing up their cars on the Maputo seafront, according to the news agency.

Coming the day after the African National Congress acknowledged responsibility for two car bombs that killed four white policemen outside a downtown Johannesburg court last week, the attack appeared to be aimed at the ANC, the principal guerrilla organization fighting white minority rule in South Africa.

Warehouse, Home Targeted

The targets included the African National Congress’ diplomatic office in Maputo, an ANC warehouse where food supplies were stored, an apartment building where an ANC physician employed by the Mozambican Health Ministry lives and the home of a Tanzanian described by diplomats in Maputo as having links to the ANC.

However, the three people killed, according to government officials in Maputo, were all Mozambicans.

They were identified as Antonio Pateguana, the country’s former ambassador to Portugal, who might have been mistaken for the ANC physician; his wife, who is the sister of Gen. Armando Panguene, the chief of staff of the Mozambican armed forces, and the night watchman at the ANC warehouse, who was burned to death in a fire set by the commandos.

In Pretoria, South African spokesmen refused to comment on the raids. They refused specifically to deny the Mozambican accusations of “direct aggression” in violation of the 1984 Nkomati Accord, a mutual security treaty between the two countries.

Pretoria Refuses Comment

“The South African Defense Force is not prepared to comment on unsubstantiated allegations of involvement in incidents in Mozambique,” a military spokeswoman said, adding that there had been “similar attempts in the past to link the defense force with incidents elsewhere.” A Foreign Ministry spokesman said he had nothing to add.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said: “We condemn the attack in the strongest possible terms. The available evidence points clearly to South Africa as the instigator of this premeditated and especially brutal attack.”

In the last month, South African commandos have attacked what they said were two African National Congress facilities in Livingstone, Zambia, but the four people killed were all Zambians with no ANC connections, according to Zambian officials.

Bomb Hidden in TV

Later, the wife of an ANC official in Harare, Zimbabwe, was killed by a bomb, hidden in a television set, that was apparently intended for the chief ANC representative there, and an ANC office was then attacked with rockets.

Last weekend, three South African exiles, including an ANC military commander, were killed by unidentified gunmen in Swaziland, and a fourth was reportedly kidnaped a few days ago.

“A campaign of murder and terror is clearly under way against us and the front-line states around South Africa,” Thabo Mbeki, the ANC information director, said at the group’s headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia. “We have warned about it, and we expect that it will probably escalate.”

According to AIM, the Mozambican news agency, the commandos landed on Maputo’s beaches from boats, drove in cars to the Polana district, where many government officials and foreign diplomats live, and began their attacks simultaneously, telling a Mozambican they encountered outside the ANC warehouse, “Disappear--we have work to do.”

Startled by Watchdogs

Attempts to break into the ANC offices were repulsed by an armed guard inside, according to ANC sources, and the squad retreated across the street, firing at the building for more than five minutes before fleeing.

At the house of the Tanzanian, the commandos were apparently startled by watchdogs, the sources said, and backed away to fire rockets at the building but caused little damage.

Diplomats living in the Polana district reported widespread gunfire for most of an hour. They interpreted the raid as not only a South African reprisal attack on ANC facilities in Maputo but also a reminder to Mozambique of its great military vulnerability.

South African forces have repeatedly raided suspected African National Congress targets in Mozambique and other neighboring states over the last decade. The attacks are seen as a means of controlling the infiltration of guerrillas into the country and the establishment of cross-border sanctuaries that would serve as rear bases for the insurgents.

The last acknowledged South African raid in Mozambique was in October, 1983, when commandos blew up an African National Congress office in Maputo. Five people were reportedly injured in the blast. Four months earlier, South African warplanes bombed a suburban Maputo jam factory suspected of being a guerrilla operations center.

In March, 1984, Mozambique and South African signed the Nkomati Accord, in which they pledged to cooperate on reducing tension between the Marxist government in Maputo and Pretoria’s white-led, staunchly anti-Communist government.

Mozambique has frequently accused South Africa of failing to honor the agreement. This week, it renewed its charges that Pretoria is continuing to assist right-wing rebels fighting the Maputo government.