Al-Qaida claims responsibility for Algerian bomb

Bombs ripped through the Algerian prime minister's office and a police station today in co-ordinated terror attacks that Algerian authorities said killed at least 23 people and wounded more than 160.

Al-Jazeera television said it received a claim of responsibility from al-Qaida's wing in North Africa.

The bombings were a devastating setback for the North African nation's efforts to close a violent chapter in its history - an Islamic insurgency that has killed 200,000 people.

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa has launched a series of recent attacks in the oil- and gas-rich nation.

The explosion at the government building at about 10.45am caused windows to rattle at least half a mile away.

A charred, wrecked car lay on the pavement about 30 metres from the gates of the building - a modern high-rise that also houses the Interior Ministry.

Algeria's main militant group recently changed its name to Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa and began targeting foreigners - signs that the country's dwindling ranks of Islamic fighters were regrouping.

Military crackdowns and amnesty offers had turned them into a ragtag assembly of fighters in rural hideouts.

For several years, the government appeared to have them under control.

But the Algiers attacks, especially on the prime minister's office, showed that the militants are far from beaten, even though experts say that they number perhaps no more than several hundred people.

Witnesses said at least one of the blasts appeared to be a car bomb.

The attacks were the deadliest to hit the Algiers region since 2002, when a bomb in a market in a suburb killed 38 people and injured 80.

The Al-Jazeera television station reported that it received a telephone call from a spokesman for al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa saying the group had carried out the attacks. It gave no further details.

Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem - who was not hurt Wednesday and had not been in the building when the attack occurred - called the bombings a "cowardly, criminal terrorist act" as he spoke to reporters outside his wrecked offices.

Parts of six floors of the building were ripped away, and the iron gates outside were bent by the force of the blast.

Witnesses said they saw a red car drive toward the building, that police opened fire to try to force it to stop, and that the car then exploded. Their accounts could not immediately be corroborated officially.

The bombings came just one day after three suspected terrorists in neighbouring Morocco blew themselves up as police were closing in, and a fourth was shot and killed by police while he appeared to be preparing to detonate his explosives.

Although there was no immediate apparent link between the violence in Morocco and Algeria, the back-to-back events illustrated how North African nations are struggling to contain Islamic extremism. Experts and intelligence officials are concerned that militants could extend their attacks across the Mediterranean to Europe.

In Algeria, the official APS agency reported that the bombing of the government building killed at least 12 people and injured 118, citing civil defense authorities. It said 11 others were killed and 44 wounded in the attack on the police station of Bab Ezzouar, east of Algiers.

Fayza Kebdi, a lawyer who works in an office opposite the government building, said the blast shattered her windows and blew her husband clear across the room.

"We thought the years of terrorism were over," she said. "We thought that everything was back to normal. But now, the fear is coming back."

Algeria's insurgency broke out in 1992, after the army cancelled legislative elections that an Islamic party appeared set to win.

Ensuing violence, attacks and massacres left an estimated 200,000 dead - civilians, soldiers and Islamic fighters - according to the government. Algeria's military led a crackdown on militants hiding out in the country's brush and mountains, while the government tried to reconcile the nation with several amnesty offers to militants willing to turn in their weapons.

The prime minister expressed bitterness at insurgents who refused the amnesty offers.

"The Algerian people stretched out a hand to them, and they respond with a terrorist act," he said.

Large-scale violence died down in the late 1990s, but skirmishes have surged again in recent months as al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa - the new name for the Salafist Group for Call and Combat - carried out bomb attacks. Several targeted foreign workers.

A March 3 bombing of a bus carrying workers for a Russian company killed a Russian engineer and three Algerians. A December attack near Algiers and targeting a bus carrying foreign employees of an affiliate of Halliburton killed an Algerian and a Lebanese citizen.