Suicide bomber kills dozens in police academy attack

A suicide bomber rammed a car full of explosives into a line of would-be police officers, killing at least 43 and injuring 45, in Algeria’s deadliest terrorist attack since the 1990s.

Yesterday’s bloodbath at a police training school rocked the gas and oil-rich US ally in North Africa where Islamic violence is increasing.

Witnesses said the blast in the town of Les Issers, 35 miles east of Algiers, dug a 3ft deep crater in the road, ripped off parts of the police academy’s roof, and damaged much of its facade and nearby buildings.

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 school said the attack happened as young applicants were lining up to register at the academy.

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

Bodies covered with blankets were strewn on the ground amid the rubble. The skeleton of a charred car lay on its side, its doors blown outward. A heap of singed clothes lay on a kerb.

Witnesses said all roads within two miles of Les Issers were blocked and mobile phone networks were scrambled as police closed off the area.

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.

He said several victims were people driving past in their cars and that their bodies were “meshed into their vehicles” by the blast.

Television footage showed interior minister Yazid Zerhouni visiting the scene of the blast. He 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 uprising in the 1990s, known by the French acronym GSPC, rebranded itself as al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa and joined the terrorist organisation.

Yesterday’s 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.

“Today’s bombing is very symbolic, a pillar of the regime has been hit,” Khadija Mohsen-Finan, head of the North Africa programme at the French think-tank IFRI, said yesterday.

“I don’t recall anything as big since the decade of the civil war,” she said, referring to the 1990s.

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

Ms Mohsen-Finan and other analysts blame the recent surge of violence on the influx of men and technology Algerian terrorists have received from al-Qaida in Iraq, and fear the attacks could continue as Algeria builds up for presidential elections next year.

Suicide attacks were unheard-of before the Algerian group linked-up with al-Qaida.

In December, a double suicide bombing in Algiers killed 41 people, including 17 United Nations workers. Last April co-ordinated suicide strikes against the main government offices in central Algiers and a police station killed 33.

Several newspapers also reported an ambush by similar suspected Islamic militants that killed 12 people on Sunday. The ambush in the Skikda area, 310 miles east of Algiers, had apparently targeted the military commander of the region and his police escort, the reports said.