There has been a bomb explosion at a synagogue in Cape Town in the early hours of Friday morning. Police say nobody was injured in the blast, but the building was extensively damaged.

The explosive device, believed to be a pipe bomb, was thrown at the entrance to the synagogue in the southern Wynberg suburb of Cape Town.

Police investigators say that at the moment they cannot identify any motive for the attack, but Jewish leaders in Cape Town say they fear it may have been carried out in reprisal for the American and British bombing raids on Iraq over the past two days.

Muslim extremists have been implicated in an earlier explosion in a crowded restaurant

Pipe bombs like the one said to have been thrown at the synagogue have been used extensively by Muslim extremist criminal gangs in the Cape Town area over the past few years.

In August this year there was a pipe bomb explosion at a crowded Planet Hollywood theme restaurant on the Cape Town waterfront, which killed two people. It happened after the United States had launched strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan against targets linked to the suspected Islamic extremist Osama bin-Laden.

There are strong indications that it may have been carried out by a Muslim extremist gang, but police have not made any arrests so far.