The City of Cape Town said its Metro Police are assisting the South African Police Service (SAPS) with its investigation into an alleged explosive device at the Jewish Community Centre on Friday, December 6.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said its office received notification from the SAPS of a report that an alleged explosive device had been thrown over the front wall of the Jewish Community Centre in Hatfield Street in Cape Town.
“Since then, the Cape Town Metro Police has assisted SAPS with the analysis of CCTV footage to get to the bottom of the incident, with the City's support for the investigation being coordinated by the Safety & Security Information Management Services (SSIMS).
"While SAPS has not officially confirmed the nature of the device, they have handed the file over to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks), indicating they view the matter with seriousness,” Hill-Lewis said.
He said should the SAPS investigation confirm this was an attempted attack on the Jewish Community Centre, he would speak for all Capetonians in condemning such an attempt in the strongest possible terms.
“Cape Town is a city of peace-loving people, where differences of faith and opinion are expressed loudly and fully, but always peacefully. Our city has a long and proud history of being a safe city for people of all religions to live and express their faith and traditions. Let us all commit ourselves to protecting and defending the best of that history,” Hill-Lewis said.
Mayoral committee member for safety and security, Alderman JP Smith said through its investments in various safety technologies it is able to assist the SAPS in various investigations.
“Through our investments in various safety technologies such as CCTV, Automatic Number Plate Recognition, gunfire detection and eye-in-the-sky aerial surveillance, the City is able to recover hundreds of firearms through gunfire detection, find lost or injured persons on the mountain or along rivers, and assist SAPS in investigations like this and others when given the opportunity,” Smith said.