Blast at S. Africa Embassy Follows Killing of ANC Aide

PARIS â€”  A bomb exploded near the South African Embassy on Wednesday in the latest of a series of attacks on South African targets in France after the killing of the Paris representative of the African National Congress.

The device, hidden in a plastic bag, went off early in the morning less than 100 yards from the heavily guarded embassy in Paris’ Left Bank quarter, shattering windows and damaging a car. Police said no one was injured.

In the Mediterranean port of Marseilles, attackers in two cars sprayed the South African Consulate with buckshot Tuesday night, a few hours after young Communists ransacked the South African tourist office in Paris.

Police investigating Tuesday’s murder of Dulcie September, Paris representative of the ANC, said it bore the hallmark of a professional hired assassin. The ANC, outlawed in South Africa, is battling white rule there.

The gunman, apparently working alone, surprised September as she was opening the ANC’s fourth-floor offices in the working-class 10th District.

She was shot five times at close range. Her key was in the lock and she was still holding her mail when she died. Police said the assailant used a gun fitted with a silencer. No one near the office reported hearing shots.

September, of mixed race, was assigned by the ANC to Paris in 1984. She had been jailed for five years in South Africa on treason charges in 1964 and was later deported.

ANC headquarters in Lusaka and the French Communist Party blamed the killing on South Africa, but Pretoria’s foreign minister, Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, denied any South African responsibility.

In the heat of the French presidential election campaign, September’s murder has become an issue, with left-wing politicians demanding to know why such a prominent anti-apartheid campaigner was not under police protection.