Algeria suicide bombings death rises to 33

The death toll from yesterday’s al-Qaida-claimed suicide bombings in Algeria today rose to 33, the government said.

Another 57 people remained in hospital from injuries suffered in the blasts that struck the prime minister’s office and a police station in Algiers. More than 200 people were wounded in all.

Today police rolled out in force in the shaken capital, establishing highway checkpoints to reinforce security.

The heavy security presence highlighted the menacing spread of Islamic militancy across North Africa and was reminiscent of the height of Algeria’s Islamic insurgency in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, Western countries reduced embassy services and urged their citizens to avoid travelling on predictable routes in the oil-and gas-rich country.

The bombings lent credence to fears that al-Qaida’s new wing in North Africa - built on the foundations of a decade-old Algerian insurgency group fighting the nation’s secular government - is coalescing into a deadly, possibly region-wide, threat.

Al-Qaida, its regional cells or affiliates have not carried out such a deadly attack in non-insurgency areas since the November 9, 2005, hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan, that killed 60 people, said Ben Venzke, head of the IntelCenter, a US government contractor that monitors al-Qaida messaging.

The group that claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attacks, al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, has carried out a series of recent bombings jeopardising Algeria’s tentative peace.

The country, a staunch US ally in the war on terrorism, has been trying to turn the page on a 15-year insurgency that killed 200,000 people.

Algeria’s neighbours have shown signs of an increase in terrorist activity. Courts in Tunisia, to the east, in recent months convicted at least two dozen suspects on terrorism-related charges – many said to be linked to the Algeria-based network.

In January, at least 14 people were killed in Tunisia in clashes between Islamist extremists and security forces.

In Morocco, to the west, three suspected terrorists blew themselves up and a fourth was shot and killed in a police raid Tuesday in the country’s largest city, Casablanca.

Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said investigators have not established links between the Casablanca violence and that in Algeria, but “we don’t rule it out".

Until recently, Algeria’s peace efforts seemed successful: Military crackdowns and amnesty offers had turned militants into a ragtag assembly of fighters in rural hideouts.

Late last year, the main Algerian militant group, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, known by the French acronym GSPC, changed its name to al Qaida in Islamic North Africa and began targeting foreigners – signs the dwindling ranks of Islamic fighters were regrouping.

Yesterday’s 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 targeting of the premier’s office was among the most brazen in Algerian history.

The date of Wednesday’s attacks, April 11, was potentially symbolic: Attacks on the 11th day of the month are a hallmark of al-Qaida and its admirers.

Algerian Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, who was not in his office during the attack, called the bombings a “cowardly, criminal terrorist act".

Parts of six floors of the building housing his office and those of the Interior Ministry were ripped away, and iron gates outside were bent by the blast.

The government did not name suspects. Al-Jazeera television reported receiving a call from a spokesman for al-Qaida’s North Africa wing saying three suicide bombers in vehicles packed with explosives carried out the attacks.

Witnesses said they saw a red car drive toward the prime minister’s office, that police opened fire to try to stop it, and that the car exploded.

Fayza Kebdi, a lawyer who works opposite the government building in Algiers, said the explosion blew her husband 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.”

Civil defence officials reported at least 12 people and 135 injured in the government building. And 12 others were killed and 87 wounded in the attack on the police station, which is on the road to Algiers’ airport.