TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Algeria Bombings Kill 26

ADVERTISEMENT

By HASSANE MEFTAHI, The Associated Press

Published: December 12, 2007

ALGIERS, Algeria - Truck bombs exploded minutes apart Tuesday in central Algiers, heavily damaging U.N. offices and partly ripping the facade off a government building. At least 26 people were killed, including U.N. workers, and scores were wounded, officials said.

The North African branch of al-Qaida claimed responsibility in a Web site posting and said suicide bombers carried out the attack.
Jihadists in Iraq who later affiliated with al-Qaida were blamed for attacking the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in 2003, killing 22.

The two bombs exploded around 9:30 a.m., and one had deliberately targeted United Nations' offices, according to the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva. The other bomb struck outside Algeria's Constitutional Council, said Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni.

Al-Qaida-linked militants who were arrested after deadly April bombings in Algeria had identified those buildings as among their future targets, the official APS news agency quoted him as saying.

A small tanker truck was used in the U.N. attack, and a van was used in the other bombing, he said.

A statement on a militant Web site said two "martyrs" of al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa drove vehicles each loaded with more than 1,700 pounds of explosives "to attack the headquarters of the international infidels' den" and Algerian Constitutional Council.

"This is another successful conquest ... carried out by the Knights of the Faith with their blood in defense of the wounded nation of Islam," the statement said.

The dead included two U.N. staff members - one Danish, the other Senegalese. Also among the dead were three people from Asia, although their nationalities were not given.

As many as 177 people were wounded.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack as a "cowardly strike" and ordered a review of security.

Algeria has been battling Islamic insurgents since the early 1990s, when the army canceled the second round of the country's first multiparty elections, stepping in to prevent likely victory by an Islamic fundamentalist party.

Islamist armed groups then turned to force to overthrow the government, with up to 200,000 people killed in the ensuing violence.

The past year has seen a series of bombings against state targets, many of them suicide attacks.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT