Dec. 11 — Two car bombs exploded in close succession in the Algerian capital today, killing at least 45 people and wounding several others, according to Algerian officials. One official said it was the worst day of violence in the capital this decade.

Thirty people died in a blast near the Constitutional Court building in Algiers, while another 15 were killed in a second explosion near a number of United Nations offices, a diplomat said, citing information released by the Algerian Civil Protection Agency.

The Algerian interior minister, Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, said that in both cases explosives had been strapped to vehicles, the Algerian press agency reported on its web site.

There was no immediate indication whether the twin attacks were the work of a well-known Salafist terrorist group with a long history of violence and alleged links to Al Qaeda.

The Group for Preaching and Combat, which is better known by its French initials, GSPC, has been under close watch by American and European counter-terrorism officials for several years.

The scrutiny intensified after the group announced last year that it had joined Al Qaeda in a bid to become its North African arm and organize extremists across the region.

Algeria suffered from intense violence after the Algerian army staged a coup to prevent an Islamic party from winning elections in 1992. The violence eventually subsided, but in recent years sporadic attacks have continued to disrupt life in Algeria and neighboring countries.

On April 11, a suicide bomb killed 33 people in Algiers. Responsibility for that attack was claimed by GSPC, also known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

That the bombing today occurred on the 11th of the month may be significant. The attack in April also occurred on the 11th. Both bring to mind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the March 11, 2004, bombings in Madrid. After the April bombing, some terrorism experts suggested that the attacks added to the accumulating symbolism of that day of the month.

The aim of the terrorist group is to overthrow the government and install an Islamic theocracy in Algeria and throughout North Africa.

Al Qaeda’ s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, publicly anointed the group as Al Qaeda’s representative in North Africa on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and in January the group changed its name to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a region that includes Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

The group has apparently undergone a revival since then, drawing new members from across North Africa, terrorism experts in Europe and North Africa say. Governments on both sides of the Mediterranean fear that the group is coalescing into a regional terror movement.

Inshallah everyone's family/friends are safe. What terrible news.

Christina

Yeah I am going there next week... I am so sad for Algeria and so pissed at these terrorist twits

From April 11th

damn them... i felt so safe in algiers two summers ago... now i'm not sure that i would go through the capital, if i went at all. so sad..

I am leaving Sunday with my little girl. I am not flying through Algiers for the first time. I am going to Oran. My husband is really agitated and I can tell he is really upset......I for whatever reason do not feel afraid to go to Algeria.. I know from experience that right after the bombings in April ( I went 3 weeks later in May) that they jack security up after the attacks...Ill be there next week, 3 days in transit...

AGI) - Algiers, 11 Dec. - A few hours before the two terror attacks that this morning in Algiers caused at least 27 dead and 43 injured, four police guards had been assassinated in the Chlef province, approximately 200 kilometres west of the capital. A convoy of the municipal police was attacked by a squad of fighters probably belonging to the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb - the local branch of the terror organisation founded by Osama bin Laden already known as Group Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, one of the most bloodthirsty fundamentalist groups in Northern Africa.
According to the 'el-Watan' newspaper this lethal ambush took place last night. The victims were going back to their barracks after going on reconnaissance and were hit by a burst of machine-gun fire as they were crossing a bridge. A fifth agent was injured and is now in serious conditions. The killers then disappeared after taking with them the weapons belonging to the policemen. Today's terror attacks in Algiers have not been claimed yet. According to the investigators, all these episodes of violence have been orchestrated by the same group.

wow, three days?! how are you getting there?

I can't imagine that anything will happen in Oran... I'm a little jealous that you're going for a visit!

OMG I pray for the families of those killed and injured. How aweful.

Well... my mom gave me frequent flyer miles for me and my little girl to fly there.. so its Orlando- Frankfurt

Then change planes for Paris.. Then over night in Paris since I am getting in so late.. Then change airports.. and then boom Oran..I start flying Sunday... I dont get anywhere until late Tuesday afternoon... I have NO IDEA what I am going to do because this will be an extended period of time thats for sure.. I have 2 full weeks in Algeria but I lose 3 days going and 2 days coming back.

Please be safe Wahraina!

I wish Al Qaeda would just disappear for good. I don't like violence.

the books i sent you came back. Do you have another address I can send them to you?

I was wondering why they never showed up. That is so odd. I didn't even get a message about them waiting for me at the post office or anything. Sorry that is my only address.

so sad

For anyone who reads French, here is the Algerian paper's report: http://www.elwatan.com/spip.php?page=artic...d_article=82592

Wow, I hadn't heard anything more about this since this morning... I can't believe how many people are dead and hurt. What a sad story.. thanks for posting that.

Eleven U.N. staff among dead in Algeria bombs: U.N.

By Patrick Worsnip
55 minutes ago


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Eleven U.N. employees are believed to have been among those killed when car bombs hit U.N. and other buildings in Algiers on Tuesday and more U.N. staff were still unaccounted for, a U.N. spokeswoman said.


At least 26 people were killed when suspected al Qaeda militants detonated twin car bombs in Algeria's capital, in one of the bloodiest attacks since civil strife in the 1990s.

An official tally put the death toll at 26, while a Health Ministry source said 67 people were killed. Algeria's state radio, monitored by the BBC in London, said the dead included three Asian nationals, a Dane and one Senegalese.

"We are now putting the U.N. death toll at 11," U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. Earlier she said, "A number of staff still remain unaccounted for and the situation, as you know, remains fluid."

A U.N. statement said one of the two blasts destroyed the offices of the U.N. Development Program, or UNDP, and severely damaged the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, in the Algerian capital.

The Geneva-based commissioner, Antonio Guterres, said in a BBC television interview he had "no doubt that the U.N. was targeted." He said the blast occurred in a street separating the main U.N. office from UNHCR's compound.

The attack brought back memories of a bomb that destroyed the U.N. office in Baghdad in 2003 and killed 22 people, including mission chief Sergio Vieira de Mello.

DIGGING THROUGH RUBBLE

Jean Fabre, head of UNDP's Geneva office, earlier told Reuters that many of the U.N. missing were from the UNDP building, which also housed other U.N. agencies including the World Food Program and International Labor Organization.

A UNHCR spokesman said a driver employed by the agency had died.

"The situation on the ground is very confusing," Okabe said earlier. "They (U.N. staff) are trying to locate people in hospitals. They're digging through the rubble." One person had been pulled alive from the rubble, she said.

Okabe said the United Nations had 19 permanent and 21 temporary international staff and 115 local staff in Algeria.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, attending a climate change conference in Indonesia, said in a statement: "Words cannot express my sense of shock, outrage and anger at the terrorist attack on the United Nations mission in Algiers today.

"This was an abject cowardly strike against civilian officials serving humanity's highest ideals under the U.N. banner -- base, indecent and unjustifiable by even the most barbarous political standard."

A statement by the 15-nation Security Council also condemned "in the strongest terms ... this heinous act of terrorism" and called on all states to cooperate with Algeria to bring the perpetrators and their backers to justice.

Algeria blamed the bombs on the north African arm of Al Qaeda.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Mark Trevelyan in London and Claudia Parsons at the United Nations, editing by Cynthia Osterman)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071212/ts_nm/algeria_un_toll_dc