Car bomb targets UN offices in Algeria
A United Nations office was the target of one of two car bombs that killed at least 45 people in Algiers today.
Up to 12 members of staff at the UN’s refugee office were feared to be among the dead.
The explosion around 9.30am blew off the front the UN building in the Algerian capital, said a UNHCR spokesman.
It apparently caused even worse damage to the main UN building housing other arms of the agency across the street.
The spokesman said it was still unknown who died or which agencies they represented.
The attack resembled the one on UN headquarters in Baghdad with a truck bomb that killed top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 others in 2003.
The second attack near the city’s Supreme Court killed 30 people.
Reports said the two bombs went off about 10 minutes apart. Some victims had been on a school bus.
Although there were no immediate claims of responsibility, suspicions quickly focused on the North African wing of al-Qaida.
The date, the 11th, could point to an Islamic terror link. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for attacks on April 11 that hit the prime minister’s office and a police station, killing 33 people.
Algeria has been battling Islamic insurgents since the early 1990s, when the army cancelled the second round of the country’s first-ever multiparty elections, stepping in to prevent likely victory by an Islamic fundamentalist party.
Islamist armed groups then turned to force to overthrow the government, with up to 200,000 people killed in the ensuing violence.
The last year has seen a series of bombings against state targets, many of them suicide attacks.
Recent bombings have been claimed by al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa. That was the name adopted in January after the remnants of the insurgency, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or GSPC, formally linked with al-Qaida.
Once focused on toppling the Algerian government, the group has now turned its sights on international holy war and the fight against Western interests. French counterterrorism officials say it is drawing members from across North Africa.
An attack on September 6, during President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s visit to the eastern city of Batna killed 22 people, and a suicide bombing two days later on a coast guard barracks in the town of Dellys, left at least 28 dead.
