Boers claim responsibility for Soweto bombings

A formerly unknown Afrikaner extremist group has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in the township of Soweto that killed one person.

The Boer Nation Warriors sent an e-mail to the Afrikaans newspaper Beeld saying the blasts signalled the end of the oppression of the Boer, or Afrikaner, nation and the “beginning of the end of the government.”

The overnight bombings in Soweto last month damaged a mosque and three rail lines. A woman was killed when debris from a bomb hit her squatter shack.

The government has blamed the bombings on a small, radical, right-wing group of Afrikaners, the white South Africans of Dutch, French and German descent who ruled the country under the racist apartheid regime that ended in 1994.

Police are searching for six Afrikaners wanted for questioning in connection with the bombings.

Those men are believed to have links to the Boeremag, or Farmers’ Force in Afrikaans, a group accused of trying to overthrow the government.

Nineteen members of the Boeremag have been arrested since August and will go on trial next year.

However, the Boer Nation Warriors appeared to be a separate group.

Calling themselves “fighters for God and the Boer people,” the group demanded the government release 35 of their comrades to make up for 35 prisoners President Thabo Mbeki had pardoned earlier this year, according to Beeld.

The arrested Boeremag members should be part of the freed group, they said.

Boer Nation Warriors said the government would suffer the consequences before and during the “false and worldly festive season” if the demands were not met.