Bomber targets crowed waiting for Algerian president
At least 16 people were killed and more than 74 injured by a bomb that ripped through a crowd waiting for the Algerian president to arrive in an eastern town.
The bomb exploded yesterday about 45 minutes before President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s scheduled arrival in Batna, about 280 miles east of the capital, Algiers – and the last stop on the president’s tour of eastern Algeria.
Local police said a man aged 30 to 35, had carried the explosive device in a bag into the middle of the crowd, which was waiting in front of Batna’s Al-Atik mosque.
Onlookers alerted police after determining the man was behaving strangely, the officials said.
As police moved in towards the man, he threw down the bag and tried to flee, and the explosion went off. It was not immediately clear whether he died or was wounded in the attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The official APS news agency quoted interior minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni as saying the bomber had tried to cross a security cordon and escaped as security forces closed in on him. “Immediately after, the bomb exploded,” he said.
Bouteflika, who arrived in Batna after the blast, made brief remarks to Algerian television, saying “the only solution was national consensus”.
Co-ordinated terror attacks killed dozens of people on April 11, when bombs ripped through the Algerian prime minister’s office and a police station in an Algiers suburb.
A new al Qaida wing claimed responsibility for the April bombings, saying they were carried out by suicide bombers in trucks packed with explosives.
The group, al Qaida in Islamic North Africa, was built on the foundations of the Algerian insurgent group that fought to try to topple Algeria’s secular government.
The insurgency broke out in 1992 after the army cancelled legislative elections that an Islamic party was set to win, and over the years an estimated 200,000 people – including militants, security forces and civilians – were killed.
In addition to the April blasts, seven simultaneous car bombs targeted police stations in February, killing six people. A July suicide car bombing in a military encampment killed 10 soldiers and wounded dozens.
The attacks have proven a devastating setback for the North African nation’s efforts to close that violent chapter in its history.
Bouteflika has devoted his presidency to ending the violence, launching a national reconciliation plan offering amnesty to insurgents who lay down their arms and stepping up military sweeps of remaining insurgent strongholds.
