Bomb attacks leave 62 dead in Algeria
Foreign Desk Report

ALGIERS—Sixty-two people were killed and scores injured in two bomb attacks in Algiers on Tuesday, according to a new toll given by hospital sources. One of the sources estimated the number of injured at more than 100, including some who were in critical condition. One explosion targetted the offices of the UN refugee agency in Algiers, while the other bomb was triggered near the Algerian Supreme Court building.
Ten UN staff, all Algerians, were among the dead, a senior UN official said. All were in the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and neighbouring UN Development Programme when the bomb went off, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. In Geneva, UNDP deputy director Jean Fabre told reporters that 12 UN employees were missing.
Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni said a suicide bomber was used in at least one of the two attacks — the latest in a series this year which have mostly been claimed by Al-Qaeda. “The death toll is very high,” Zerhouni told reporters. Those killed included a number of university students, riding in a bus that took the full force of the explosion outside the Supreme Court.
Two car bombs, one of which targeted the U.N. refugee agency’s offices, killed at least 45 people including 10 U.N. staff members Tuesday, authorities said. Jean Fabre of the U.N. Development Program said it was still unknown who died or which U.N. agencies they represented. Fabre said he received the information from Marc Destanne De Bernis, the agency’s top official in the Algerian capital.
The explosion occurred around 9:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. EST) and blew off the front off the U.N. refugee agency building, said UNHCR chief spokesman Ron Redmond. It apparently caused even worse damage to the main U.N. building housing the U.N. Development Program and other agencies diagonally across the street. Tuesday’s attack recalled the Aug. 19, 2003, attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad with a truck bomb that killed top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others.
The civil protection agency said one attack killed 30 people Tuesday and that a second blast left another 15 people dead. Public radio, Algiers Network 3, said the two bombs went off about 10 minutes apart. Some victims of one of the attacks had been riding a school bus, the official news agency APS said. Although there were no immediate claims of responsibility, suspicions quickly focused on the North African wing of al-Qaida.
The date — the 11th — could point to an Islamic terror link. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for attacks on April 11 that hit the prime minister’s office and a police station, killing 33 people. Algeria has been battling Islamic insurgents since the early 1990s, when the army canceled the second round of the country’s first-ever 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 last year has seen a series of bombings against state targets, many of them suicide attacks. Recent bombings have been claimed by al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa. That was the name adopted in January after the remnants of the insurgency, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or GSPC, formally linked with al-Qaida.
Once focused on toppling the Algerian government, the group has now turned its sights on international holy war and the fight against Western interests. French counterterrorism officials say it is drawing members from across North Africa. A Sept. 6 attack during President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s visit to the eastern city of Batna killed 22 people, and a suicide bombing two days later on a coast guard barracks in the town of Dellys left at least 28 dead.
At least forty-seven people were killed when two car bombs exploded in upscale districts of Algiers on Tuesday, a security source said, in the bloodiest attack since the 1990s on the capital of the OPEC member state.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but commentators said it appeared the work of al Qaeda’s north Africa wing, which claimed a similar bombing in downtown Algiers in April and other blasts east of the capital over the summer that have worried foreign investors.
One of Tuesday’s blasts struck near the Constitutional Court building in Ben Aknoun district and the other close to the U.N. offices and a police station in Hydra, both areas where several Western companies have their offices, a source said.
Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said a suicide attacker appeared to have detonated the Hydra bomb.
In Ben Aknoun people ran through the streets crying in panic and the wail of police sirens filled the air.
A body lay on the road covered with a white blanket, two buses were burning, debris from damaged cars was strewn across pavements while police struggled to hold back onlookers.
“I want to call my family, but it is impossible. The network is jammed. I know they are very concerned as I work near by the council,” a veiled woman working at a perfume shop said.