Al-Qaida claim responsibility for Algeria bombings

Al-Qaida’s North African affiliate claimed responsibility today for a car bombing in Algeria that killed 30 coastguard officers and another recent blast that ripped through a crowd waiting for the president.

In yesterday’s blast, explosives planted in a van ripped through barracks in the northern coastal town of Dellys, about 30 miles from the capital, Algiers. The bombing appeared timed to kill as many officers as possible when they were grouped together to raise the flag.

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility in a statement posted on an Islamic website, and the group said it also was behind a blast on Thursday that killed at least 22 in eastern Algeria.

“We swear to God to continue sacrificing our lives until you stop supporting the crusaders in their war, apply the Islamic tenet and stop your war against God’s religion,” the group said in the statement.

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa has carried out a spate of recent bombings that have shattered the Algerian government’s efforts – successful until recently – to restore calm after a 15-year Islamist insurgency.

The government has responded by intensifying military crackdowns on Islamic militants hiding out in remote scrubland. Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni warned terrorists on Friday that they have “one choice: Turn themselves in, or die”.

Saturday’s bombing killed 30 coastguards, the Interior Minister said. Dozens were injured.

It was Algeria’s deadliest attack since April, when triple suicide bombings against the prime minister’s office and a police station killed 32.

In New York, Jean-Maurice Ripert, France’s ambassador to the UN and president of the UN Security Council, condemned the bombing, calling it a “heinous terrorist attack”.

Thursday’s bombing struck a crowd of people waiting to see visiting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has devoted his eight years in office to ending violence by insurgents. His government is also a staunch US ally in the war against terror.

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa said the bomber “carried out a suicide attack with his explosive belt … targeting Bouteflika during his visit to the town but unable to reach him, he exploded himself amid the security men”.

Algeria’s insurgency broke out in 1992 after the army cancelled elections that a now-banned Islamic party was poised to win. Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing violence.

Widespread killings were on the wane until this year, when the Algerian militant group Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or GSPC, officially linked up with al Qaida, taking the name al Qaida in Islamic North Africa.

The group claimed responsibility for the triple suicide attacks in April and another blast in July, when a suicide bomber blew up a truck inside a military encampment, killing 10 soldiers. The militants have also killed foreigners in smaller-scale attacks.

Over the years, the government has offered amnesty to reformed militants while waging tough military operations against those who refused them – a strategy Bouteflika pledges will reconcile the nation.

Those tactics dramatically reduced the number of fighters, and the GSPC may have joined up with al-Qaida partly as a way to survive and attract a new generation of fighters.

“To recruit, they can say, we are in international jihad, we need to help our brothers in Iraq, and Afghanistan, not just fight in Algeria,” said Louis Caprioli, the former assistant director of France’s DST counterintelligence agency, who now works for risk-management company Geos.

Despite the wave of recent attacks, Algerian officials have repeatedly insisted that al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa is riven with internal disputes and ready to implode.

Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said that terrorism was in “decline” in Algeria, and that militants “have never succeeded, in 17 years, in their desperate need to strike at the country’s stability.”