28 Blacks Killed in S. Africa Bus Attack : Factional Violence in Natal Province Blamed in Assault

At least 28 blacks were killed and 56 injured today when gunmen fired at a bus, hitting the driver and sending it plunging down an embankment.

A police spokesman said gunmen fired at the bus and a nearby van just before dawn at Inanda in Natal province, an area hit by black factional violence.

The bus driver was hit by a bullet and the vehicle plunged down an embankment into a river, he said. The van also fell down the embankment but no one in it was killed, he said.

Twenty-eight people on the bus were killed and 56 injured, police said. It was not known how many of the victims were hit by gunfire.

Rival black factions had been fighting in the area a few hours earlier, he said. Police were hunting for the attackers, he said.

Natal has been hit by bloody fighting in recent years between the African National Congress, the main black nationalist group, and Inkatha, a conservative Zulu political movement. The two groups oppose apartheid, but differ over plans for a future South Africa.

A local journalist, who asked not to be named, said the fighting Tuesday night was between ANC and Inkatha factions. The two groups had been shooting across the road at each other when the van and bus were hit, she said.

Police also said today that two men were stabbed to death in black factional violence in a separate incident in Natal.

A police patrol wounded two men when it was attacked by blacks with guns and rocks Tuesday near Port Shepstone in Natal, police said.

At least 4,000 people have died in the Natal violence since 1986.

In other developments, a bomb believed planted by right-wing extremists exploded next to a building just minutes after a protest against military conscription was moved to another site, police said.

The blast late Tuesday in the southeastern city of East London damaged a wall in a building where a radical group was to have held a meeting, but there were no reports of injuries, police said.

Police experts said the bomb was a powerful “military-type device.”

Police said no group had claimed responsibility for the blast.