Algeria police academy bombing leaves dozens dead

At least 43 people died in Algeria’s deadliest terrorist attack since the 1990s when a suicide bomber rammed a car full of explosives into applicants queuing outside a police academy today.

More than 40 people were also injured in the attack, according to officials.

Witnesses said the blast in the town of Les Issers, some 35 miles east of Algiers, dug a 3ft-deep crater in the road and ripped off parts of the police academy’s roof.

No group has yet claimed responsibility, but the country’s al-Qaida affiliate has said it was behind a series of bombings in the past two years.

A security official at the academy said the attack occurred as young applicants were queuing to register at the local police academy.

The attacker drove into the middle of the queue and set off the explosives, the official said.

A witness who arrived on the scene at the same time as rescuers said the area was “a nightmare.”

“There were bodies scattered all over the road, some corpses were completely charred, you couldn’t even recognise their faces,” he said.

Television footage showed Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni visiting the scene of the blast. Mr Zerhouni vowed to take whatever measures necessary against those responsible.

Violence has dramatically increased in Algeria since 2006, when the country’s last big extremist group left over from an insurgency in the 1990s, known by the French acronym GSPC, rebranded itself as Al Qaida in Islamic North Africa and joined the terrorist organisation.

The bombing was the deadliest yet of the new group’s attacks, according to official death toll figures.

Some attacks have struck foreigners, while most have targeted the Algerian military and national security services, which are controlled by secular-leaning generals.

Algeria’s insurgency broke out in 1992, when the army cancelled the second round of legislative elections an Islamist party was tipped to win. The ensuing battle between Islamist fighters and security forces claimed up to 200,000 lives, with massacres blamed on both sides.

The European Union said it “very firmly condemns the terrorist acts that have just claimed so many lives.”

The Algerian people are “once again victims of blind and barbaric terrorist violence,” said an EU statement.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi also personally expressed their support to Algeria’s president and offered their condolences to the family of the victims.