May 21, 1983

A car bomb exploded today outside the headquarters of the South African Air Force in Pretoria, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than 190. The Minister of Law and Order, Louis Le Grange, said he had no doubt that black guerrillas of the outlawed African National Congress, a major movement of resistance to white minority rule, were responsible for the blast. Officials described the explosion, which occurred at 4:30 P.M. at the height of the rush hour, as the biggest terrorist attack against the Government to date. No One Takes Responsibility There was no immediate confirmation from any of the African National Congress's offices outside South Africa that it had ordered the attack, and no one else claimed immediate responsiblity for it.

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President Reagan, saying there were dangers in a ''Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan axis,'' warned Congressional critics of his Latin-American policy today that they risked leaving the hemisphere ''immobilized by fear or apathy.'' In a denunciation of ''the Soviets and their henchmen in Havana,'' the President told a cheering audience of Cuban expatriates that the outcome of his campaign for greater military and economic aid for Central America ''will shape America's image throughout the world.'' Praising the ''big stick'' philosophy of Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Reagan said there were too many ''soft speakers'' today. 'Who Will Believe Us?'

The United States accused the Soviet Union today of killing hundreds and probably thousands of Afghan civilians through a series of bombing raids in Afghanistan in recent weeks. In one of the harshest statements issued by the State Department about Soviet actions, John Hughes, the spokesman, said the ruthlessness of the raids in and around the city of Herat and north and west of the capital, Kabul, were ''intolerable by any standard of civilized behavior.'' The statement said reliable reports continued to reach Washington ''of extremely heavy, brutal and prolonged Soviet and Soviet-mandated bombing of civilian areas within Afghanistan in recent weeks.'' Major Soviet Offensive ''These reports leave no room for doubt that casualties among the civilian population have been extremely heavy,'' Mr. Hughes said, reading the statement. ''It is not possible to measure precisely the extent of these casualties, but they certainly number many hundreds and are probably in the thousands.''

Benjamin L. Hooks has been indefinitely suspended as executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People by the organization's chairman, Margaret Bush Wilson, members of the association's board said yesterday. Mrs. Wilson, who has long been in a power struggle with Mr. Hooks, formally suspended him on Wednesday, A board member said Mrs. Wilson's authority to suspend Mr. Hooks had been affirmed at a meeting of the board's executive committee last week in Chicago. Mr. Hooks serves at the discretion of the group's 64-member board. Mrs. Wilson designated Thomas I. Atkins, the group's general counsel, as acting executive director until the board meets to resolve the issue. It was unclear what immediate effect the suspension would have on the daily operations of the association, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group, which has its headquarters in Brooklyn Heights. Mr. Hooks declined to comment yesterday morning. An aide to Mrs. Wilson in St. Louis, where she practices law, said Mrs. Wilson was in Washington. Efforts to reach her for comment were unsuccessful.