Some South Africans hurl beds to greet New Year

New Year revellers in South Africa’s commercial capital Johannesburg celebrated 2003 by hurling beds, televisions and other missiles from their windows, injuring 46 passers-by, police say. A police spokesman said party-goers in the city’s notoriously dangerous Hillbrow district had thrown televisions, beds, bottles and rocks from apartment windows and that gunshots had been heard from one building.

“It is customary in Hillbrow for people to celebrate the New Year by throwing objects off their balconies,” he said on Wednesday, but added that recent year-end festivities had been much calmed by an increased police presence in the district.