THE UNITED STATES said yesterday it would work closely with South Africa to find and punish the bombers who killed one man and injured 27 in Cape Town's Planet Hollywood restaurant. South Africa's Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi said the bombing Tuesday night was probably linked to last Thursday's US military strikes against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan. The US attacks were themselves retaliation for the bombing earlier this month of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. National Police Commissioner George Fivaz said that an FBI team probing the embassy bombings will help investigate the restaurant explosion. Two callers told a local radio station that the blast was the work of Muslims Against Global Oppression, a group which first surfaced in March when US President Bill Clinton visited Cape Town. One of the callers, calling himself Jihad, said the blast was in retaliation against US attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan. A spokesman for the group later called the radio station to deny it was behind the attack. "This is an act of terror," he said. Sheikh Achmed Seddik, a spokesman for the Muslim Judicial Council, told the radio his group condemned the blast. "There are heavy anti-American sentiments in the [Muslim] community and we are all perturbed about America attacking Afghanistan and Sudan, but I don't say there is a link," he said. A US administration spokeswoman condemned the attack but said the government was not certain whether it was related to the American strikes against Sudan and Afghanistan. "We are condemning in the strongest terms what appears to be an outrageous and despicable attack," the spokeswoman told journalists.
