Suspected al-Qaeda militants detonated twin car bombs in Algiers today, killing up to 67 people in the bloodiest attack in the north African country since an undeclared civil war in the 1990s.
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| A gendarme stands at the site of a bomb blast at the Constitutional Court building in Algiers |
At least four United Nations employees were killed and 14 were missing, UN officials said after blasts which left bodies on the street and destroyed several cars and buses.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told BBC World television: "I have no doubt that the UN was targeted." The bombs were set off by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), Algerian Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said, referring to the former name of al-Qaeda's north Africa wing.
"We are sure that the GSPC is behind it," Mr Zerhouni told a news conference.
A health ministry source said 67 people were killed in the explosions in affluent districts of Algiers. Al-Qaeda's north Africa wing claimed it carried out a similar bombing in downtown Algiers in April and other blasts east of the capital over the summer that have worried foreign investors in the Opec member state.
The White House described the attackers as "enemies of humanity". Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern tonight branded as shocking the bombing in Algeria. Mr Ahern said it was particularly disturbing that a UN office had been targeted.
One of today's blasts struck near the Constitutional Court building in Ben Aknoun district and the other close to the UN offices and a police station in Hydra, both areas where several Western companies have their offices.
The interior minister said a suicide attacker appeared to have detonated the Hydra bomb. Several of the casualties in Ben Aknoun were students riding a school bus, the official APS news agency said.
In Ben Aknoun people ran through the streets crying in panic and the wail of police sirens filled the air. A body lay on the road covered with a white blanket, two buses were burning, debris from damaged cars was strewn across pavements while police struggled to hold back onlookers.
"I want to call my family, but it is impossible. The network is jammed. I know they are very concerned as I work near by the council," a veiled woman working at a perfume shop said. "There was a massive blast," a UN worker wrote in an anonymous item for a BBC website.
"Everything shattered. Everything fell. I hid under a piece of furniture so I wouldn't be hit by the debris... One of my colleagues had a big wound in her neck, she was bleeding severely."
Fears Algeria, a major gas supplier to Europe, is recovering from more than a decade of violence that began in 1992 when the then army-backed government scrapped elections a radical Islamic party was poised to win.
Up to 200,000 people have been killed in the subsequent violence. The violence has subsided since then but a string of attacks this year including the April 11th attack that killed 33 in Algiers has raised fears the country could slip back into the turmoil of the 1990s.
Some attacks or attempted attacks have occurred on the 11th of the month in what Algerians interpret as a form of homage to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Western nations have expressed concern at militant Islamist activity through the north African region and dependants of several Western firms operating in Algeria have been repatriated over the past 12 months due to security worries.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who visited Algiers only last week, called the blasts "barbaric and profoundly cowardly acts".
Washington condemned the attacks and said it would continue counter-terror collaboration with Algeria. Anis Rahmani editor of Ennahar daily and a security specialist said: "Al-Qaeda wanted to send a strong message that it is still capable despite the lost of several top leaders. Now the key problem is that social conditions are still offering chances for terrorists to hire new rebels. "