17 confirmed dead in Algeria bombing
A booby-trapped car exploded at a barracks housing coast guard officials in Algeria today, killing at least 17 people and injuring about 30, the country’s official news agency reported, citing hospital authorities.
The bomb went off in the northern coastal town of Dellys, about 30 miles from Algiers. In the confusion, security officials initially gave a lower death toll before the APS agency released an official count by hospitals. Some of those injured were in serious condition.
The attack came just two days after another bombing killed at least 20 in a crowd of people in eastern Algeria who were waiting to see visiting President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has devoted his eight years in office to ending the country’s Islamic insurgency.
There was widespread speculation that Bouteflika was the intended target of that attack, though Algerian officials kept silent on the question. Police said the bomber was killed by security services after he dropped the explosives and tried to escape.
Algeria’s insurgency broke out in 1992, after the army cancelled legislative elections that a now-banned Islamic fundamentalist party was poised to win. Up to 200,000 people – Islamic fighters, security forces and civilians – have been killed over the years, according to estimates.
Widespread killing was on the wane until recently, but violence resurfaced this year after Algeria’s Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or GSPC, officially linked with al Qaida, taking the name al Qaida in Islamic North Africa.
The group claimed responsibility for other attacks this year, including an April suicide bombing outside the prime minister’s office in Algiers and a simultaneous attack on a police station that killed 32 people.
Al-Qaida’s Algerian branch also said it was responsible for another attack in July, when a suicide bomber blew up a refrigerated truck inside a military encampment south-east of the Algerian capital, killing 10 soldiers.
