Rescue work ends at bombed UN building

RESCUE workers yesterday called off the search for survivors at the UN building in Algeria blasted apart by a suicide bomber.

Officially 37 people died in the two car bombs that hit the UN offices and a court complex in the capital Algiers on Tuesday.

Rescue teams had already stopped work amid the debris of the Algerian Constitutional Council building.

In the first 24 hours after the blasts, which struck almost simultaneously and have been claimed by al-Qaida, rescuers found seven survivors.

Marie Heuze, chief spokeswoman for the UN offices in Geneva, said 11 staff died in the attack and five were still missing.

It was the deadliest single attack against UN staff and facilities since August 2003, when its headquarters in Baghdad was hit by a truck laden with explosives. That attack killed 22 people.

Algeria’s Islamic insurgency broke out in the early 1990s, when the army cancelled the second round of the country’s first multiparty elections to prevent likely victory by Islamic fundamentalists.

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

Late last year, the main militant group — the Salafist Group for Call and Combat — changed its name to al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa and began larger-scale bombings.

Insurgents have largely focused on symbols of the military-backed government and civilians. The strike against the UN office signalled a change in tactics.