In Algieria, twin boms kill at least 52

By Craig Whitlock, Washington Post Service
December 11, 2007

BERLIN, Dec. 11 — At least 52 people were killed and dozens were injured in twin blasts that struck the capital of Algeria Tuesday morning, the deadliest attacks in the city since the North African country plunged into civil war in the 1990s, hospital and other officials said. At least 10 United Nations officials were among the victims.

The explosions were the second mass-casualty attack this year against government targets in the Mediterranean port city of Algiers. On April 11, suicide bombers killed 33 people and injured more than 220 in an operation carried out by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an umbrella group of Islamic radicals in North Africa that pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden’s international terrorist network last year.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday’s bombings. The intended targets were the Algerian Supreme Court and an office complex for U.N. agencies, according to Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni. Zerhouni said booby-trapped cars were used in the bombings and children in a school bus were among the casualties, the official Algerian Press Service reported.

Other Algerian media said the bombs exploded within 10 minutes of each other in an apparently coordinated attack.

“The death toll is very high,” Zerhouni told reporters in Algiers.

The interior minister said a preliminary investigation indicated that a suicide bomber may have exploded a car near the U.N. office complex, which is located in a well-guarded district of the capital that includes several embassies and government offices.

“According to at least one eyewitness, it a suicide attack, since he saw one person driving a car and who was inside the vehicle which went off,” Zerhouni told Algerian public radio. “Was it a suicide bomber, or was he exploded without his knowledge, we can’t say. But we don’t exclude anything.”

Jean Fabre, an official with the U.N. Development Program, said 10 U.N. staff members were killed in the blast, according to the Associated Press. U.N. officials said they are still trying to determine the final casualty count, but that offices for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the Development Program were affected.

Islamic radicals have fought a bloody insurgency against the Algerian government since 1992, resulting in an estimated 200,000 deaths. The violence has largely subsided in recent years, with the fighting confined to rural areas. But the calm that had taken root in the capital and other urban areas has come under renewed assault this year.

Until Tuesday, the bombings in Algiers in April had been the deadliest in the capital in a decade and the first major suicide attack in Algeria since the 1990s. Since then, the North African al-Qaeda faction has launched several other serious attacks, including a suicide bomber who targeted President Abdelaziz Bouteflika as he traveled to the eastern city of Batna on Sept. 6.

Bouteflika was unhurt, but 22 bystanders were killed. Two days later, 30 people died in a suicide attack against a coast guard barracks east of Algiers.

The spike in violence threatens to undermine Algeria’s economic and political recovery from its 1990s civil war. The country, a major exporter of natural gas to Europe and the United States, has profited from the recent spike in energy prices. It also has held several rounds of presidential and parliamentary elections in recent years, although they have been largely boycotted by Islamic fundamentalist groups.

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