11 Blacks Die in S. Africa; 24-Hr. Toll 25

Police opened fire on a crowd of blacks in a tribal homeland today, killing 11 and bringing to 25 the number of deaths in the bloodiest 24 hours in South Africa in a year, authorities said.

Security forces clashed with blacks in several violence-torn townships and the tribal homeland of Bophuthatswana, authorities said.

In Bophuthatswana, security forces said they opened fire on a crowd of blacks this morning who were allegedly holding an illegal meeting, killing 11 people.

Police spokesman Col. M.A. Molope of the tribal homeland, considered independent by South Africa but not recognized as such by any other nation, said dozens of people were injured and about 1,000 arrested in daylong rioting in Bophuthatswana, 50 miles north of Johannesburg.

Molope said the police fired on the crowd when it disobeyed orders to disperse, but a Roman Catholic church source reached by telephone said, “The police just drove up and went wild.”

Witnesses to the killings in Bophuthatswana told reporters that the estimated 1,000 people who were arrested, including many who were wounded, waited more than an hour for transport to prisons and hospitals.

Authorities in Pretoria said police in Port Elizabeth’s black township of Kwazakele fired on a crowd of blacks today when they attacked the state-run liquor store, killing eight.

Police killed two more men outside another liquor store in Kwazakele late Tuesday when about 2,000 blacks attacked a police patrol with gasoline bombs, authorities said.

In Cape Town’s Crossroads shantytown, where two policemen were killed Tuesday, police shot and killed two youths who threw stones at the officers’ vehicle.

Police said a black man was shot to death by a guard outside a government-owned beer hall in the Kagiso ghetto near Johannesburg.

And in Durban’s Chesterville black ghetto, a man was murdered by blacks who put a burning car tire around his neck, police said.

The 24-hour period of violence was the bloodiest spate of racial unrest in South Africa since last March 21, when security forces fired on a crowd heading for a funeral near Uitenhage, killing at least 21 people.

At least 133 people have been killed this month in political violence, police shootings, intertribal clashes and mine riots.