Two people were killed and five others injured when a bomb exploded in Bedfordview near the Eastgate shopping mall on Tuesday, police said.
Police were still combing the scene late on Tuesday night at the the property of Czech businesmen Radovan Krejcir where the bomb blast occured.
Forensic experts late in the evening told Sapa that the roof of the building had collapsed due to the magnitude of the blast.
A forensic expect who cannot be named said they were still trying to establish what kind of explosive was used.
“We still have to figure out what kind of bomb it was and the type of components it had.”
The injured were taken to Bedford Gardens hospital.
The bodies of the dead were still inside the building after 12 at night and were expected to be removed in the early hours of Wednesday.
The explosion took place on the corner of Bradford and Nicol Roads, with the intersection closed off to traffic and cordoned off by police.
In July, Krejcir was the target of an apparent bid to kill him outside his Bedfordview office.
“It is alleged that he [Krejcir] arrived at the premises and parked his vehicle,” police spokesman Lt-Col Lungelo Dlamini said at the time.
“As he was leaving the parking spot, an explosive device was detonated from the back of a vehicle, a VW Polo, parked opposite his vehicle.”
Krejcir escaped unharmed. The blast, in the parking lot of the Money Point gold and diamond exchange’s head office, on the corner of Nicol and Bradford Roads, Bedfordview, left several holes in Krejcir’s car.
The VW Polo was stolen in Brixton, Johannesburg, in April.
Krejcir said he heard noises, like bullets being fired, from a car he parked next to.
“I managed to get away and saved my life… someone out there tried to kill me,” Krejcir told Sapa at the time.
About three weeks earlier, Krejcir’s Bedfordview business was broken into and jewellery worth R3 million was stolen.
“It is on the same premises where an attempt to kill him was executed. On July 3, unknown suspects broke into the premises through the roof, cut open a safe, and stole jewellery worth approximately R3 million,” Dlamini said at the time. – Sapa
