6 Shot as Blacks Fight Blacks in S. Africa Camp

CAPE TOWN, South Africa —  Fierce fighting broke out today among thousands of blacks on the fringes of the Crossroads squatter camp. At least six people were shot and hundreds of dwellings were set afire.

Police moved in firing buckshot and tear gas to try to disperse the roving gangs of fighters, the South African Press Assn. said.

The battles--a renewal of fighting that killed at least 33 people and left 30,000 people homeless in May--pitted about 3,000 conservative black vigilantes against 8,000 militant black youths and refugees, the news agency said.

An ambulance service and relief center that had been home to 2,200 refugees was burning, and all the residents had fled. Other reports said hundreds of shacks were burning in the KTC section of Crossroads, one of several settlements on the edge of the squatter camp.

Couldn’t Halt Fighting

A police spokesman at the shanty city 12 miles east of Cape Town said security forces moved into the area but could not immediately halt the fighting.

Police were also reportedly trying to get into one house from which gunshots were being fired.

In May, the vigilantes, including the oldest residents of Crossroads, effectively defeated the militant anti-apartheid activists for control of the squatter camp.

Some of the thousands of refugees living in tents, churches and halls near the scene of May’s fighting had said earlier that they feared renewed attacks by the vigilantes to drive them permanently from the area.

Workers Trapped

Five workers from an ambulance service near the shanty settlement were briefly trapped inside the clinic during today’s fighting.

Before police could arrive, the five escaped along with some homeless refugees.

The vigilantes then set fire to the building, a spokesman for the ambulance center said, adding that a second clinic next door and tents housing refugees also were under siege. The refugees fled, he said.