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Church Street bombing, Pretoria

Explanation
On 29 May 1983, MK members detonated an explosive device outside the administrative headquarters of the South African Air Force (SAAF) in Church Street, Pretoria. According to ANC policy, security force personnel and military installations were targeted in a systematic bombing campaign. Twenty-one people were killed and 219 injured in this attack. Eleven of the dead were SAAF employees. Two others were the MK operatives who had executed the attack. The remaining casualties were civilians. Evidence before the Committee revealed that up to 84 of the injured had been SAAF employees. Three MK members were granted amnesty for their roles in the event.

... at war.” 9 As is apparent from the testimony of the former head of ANC special operations, Mr Aboobaker Ismail, in the amnesty hearing on the Church Street bombing of the South African Air Force headquarters (in which nineteen people were killed and over 200 injured), many acts were ...
... reality was that more civilians than security force personnel were killed in such explosions. 508 The first major bomb blast of this kind was the Church Street bombing in Pretoria on 20 May 1983.31 Twenty-one people were killed and 219 injured when a car bomb exploded outside the building which ...
... was petrol-bombed by Mr Christopher Mosiane [AM3768/96] and another named askari. 536 Mosiane also applied for amnesty for an arson attack on a church in Witbank, Eastern Transvaal, allegedly on instructions from the Witbank security police. According to Mosiane, the reason was that the ...
... military operations, even in cases where they conformed to the general practice, if not the general policy, of the ANC. 14 In the Pretoria Church Street bomb explosion on 20 May 1983, the MK Special Operations Unit planted a car bomb outside the building housing the administrative ...
... after a brief period of detention. He intended to study. In May 1983, a bomb detonated outside the South African Air Force (SAAF) headquarters in Church Street Pretoria, killing eleven people. The following week, the SAAF launched a retaliatory raid on a suburb in Maputo, killing six people, ...
... hearings: a Johannesburg (29 April - 3 May 1996). The first hearing organised by the Johannesburg office took place at the Central Methodist Church. The whole office worked on preparing different aspects of the event. Not much statement taking had taken place prior to the hearing, and ...
... of the security forces, the casualties were predominantly civilian passers-by. According to Mr Aboobaker Ismail, testifying at the hearing on the Church Street bombing (Pretoria, 4 May 1998): If we were to accept that nobody would be killed at any stage, then we wouldn’t have executed the ...
... other. I couldn’t hear properly because the eardrums were shattered. I was burnt extensively. 62 Mr Neville James Clarence was blinded in the Church Street bombing at the Air Force Headquarters in Pretoria on 20 May 1983. He described his physical rehabilitation at the Pretoria hearing: I ...
... on ‘collaborators’ form a significant proportion of MK armed actions. According to Mr Aboobaker Ismail, who gave evidence at the hearing on the Church Street bombing in Pretoria on 4 May 1998: This was never a target, an attack against whites. We never fought a racist war. We fought to undo ...
or after it took place. 431 The SADF’s second raid on Maputo – Operation Skerwe – on 23 May 1983 was launched in retaliation for the ANC’s Church Street bombing in Pretoria three days earlier. The report below is derived from material in MI files (DMI MI/309/2 and MI/204/2/2/9). 432 ...
... that led to the launch of several high-profile attacks on police stations, state infrastructure and a major attack on SADF personnel, namely the Church Street bombing. Here a car bomb placed outside the South African Air Force headquarters in Pretoria led to the deaths of nineteen people. In ...
 
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