Algeria hit by surge in guerrilla violence

[Al-khiyal]

ALGIERS -- A day after suicide bombers blasted the walls off the Algerian prime minister's office and carried out two other coordinated attacks, killing 33 persons, Algerians seemed resigned to a return to violence.

Workers in hard hats were already cementing bricks into place at the prime minister's office yesterday to patch up the devastation. The speedy rebuilding was one sign that Algeria had reverted to survival skills learned during the deadly Islamist insurgency that peaked in the 1990s.

Streets were closed off. Police turned out in force - a once-familiar sight in Algiers, which had come to life again after the dark years when people were afraid to go out at night. Once again Wednesday night, people mostly stayed home.

The next day, people swamped newsstands and gathered in parks to talk about what happened. Hamoud Ouachad, 33, passed the time by watching workers at the prime minister's office, where a scaffolding surrounded the building.

"We had forgotten what happened," he said, referring to the insurgency. "And now it's starting over. ... We want peace. We don't want this to become a daily occurrence."

Fifty-seven persons remained hospitalized with injuries yesterday. Western countries reduced embassy services and urged their citizens to avoid traveling on predictable routes.

The new al Qaeda faction that took responsibility for Wednesday's bombings, al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa, was built on the foundations of the Algerian insurgent group that tried to topple Algeria's secular government.

The insurgency broke out in 1992, and over the years an estimated 200,000 people - including militants, security forces and civilians - were killed.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has devoted his presidency to ending the insurgency, held an emergency meeting with senior officials. Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said May 17 legislative elections would go ahead.

"Such criminal acts are meant to plunge Algeria back into the crisis years," Mr. Belkhadem said.

Interior Minister Yazid Noureddine Zerhouni blamed the attacks on Abdelmalek Droukdal, leader of Algeria's al Qaeda faction.

"Neutralizing him could take several weeks or several years," the minister said.

The new al Qaeda group posted pictures, names and details about the bombers on an Islamic Web site known as a clearinghouse for extremist groups' material. The site said the man who attacked the prime minister's office, identified as Mouaz bin Jabl, used 1,500 pounds of explosives, a claim that could not be verified.

Until recently, Algeria's peace efforts seemed successful. Military crackdowns and amnesty offers decimated the ranks of militants and left the holdouts isolated in rural hide-outs. No major attack had hit the Algiers region since 2002.

But late last year, the main Algerian militant group, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, changed its name to al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa and began targeting foreigners - signs that the dwindling ranks of Islamic fighters were regrouping.

Algeria reverts to survival mode after attacks

[Al-khiyal]

PARIS: The death toll from Wednesday's suicide bombings in Algeria rose by 10 on Thursday, to 33, and the police mounted a nationwide manhunt for those responsible for the attacks.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, North Africa's most active terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the twin bombings, which were directed at the main government building in Algiers and at a police station east of the city. More than 200 people were wounded.

It could have been even worse: the police found a third bomb in a Mercedes-Benz sedan near the home of Ali Tounsi, director general of the national police, according to witnesses and local press reports. The bomb was defused.

It was apparently one of the bombs referred to on Islamist Web sites on Wednesday, which claimed that a third suicide bomber was attacking the Algerian headquarters of Interpol. Interpol links police forces in 186 countries around the world.

The police set up checkpoints around Algiers and increased patrols on the outskirts, but the mood there had already darkened. The French-language daily newspaper Liberté wrote that the attacks "have wakened the demons of a violence we believed had been contained."

Algeria has only recently emerged from the shadows of a brutal civil war, set off when the military canceled elections in 1992 that a fundamentalist Islamic party was poised to win. The war, which wound down after a government amnesty in 1999, was marked by horrific massacres of men, women and children — slitting throats was common— that left deep scars in the national psyche.

A national reconciliation program last year sought to shut that history firmly in the past with a new amnesty for the remaining Islamist fighters and with the release of hundreds of former fighters from jail. Even talking of the past atrocities became illegal.

A committed core of Islamists kept up the fight, but most Algerians were confident that the movement had been defeated, as repeated government pronouncements claimed.

Islamists warned otherwise, however. "When you leave a small fire burning, it can spread," Abdelhak Layada, a founder of the Armed Islamic Group, said in an interview last June, shortly after he was freed under the reconciliation program.

The Armed Islamic Group was a precursor to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which announced an alliance with Al Qaeda last year and recently changed its name to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The bombings took place on the fifth anniversary of a deadly truck bombing at El Ghriba Synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, for which the Salafists claimed responsibility. Twenty-one people died in that attack.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb continues to claim that it does not attack ordinary Algerians, but Wednesday's bombings showed otherwise. Many of the people who died were office workers or bystanders outside the government building.

People were quick to blame the government, saying lenience toward former rebels encouraged the movement and weakened the resolve of the army and the police.

"There's been a lack of vigilance on the part of the security forces," said Mahmoud Belhimeur, an editor at El Khabar newspaper. "They said that it's over, but they forgot that these people operate best when it's calm."

Toll in Algeria bombings rises to 33; manhunt begins

[Al-khiyal]

UNITED NATIONS, April 13 (KUNA) -- The UN Security Council (UNSC) late Thursday condemned in the "strongest terms" the two suicide attacks in Algiers Wednesday and stressed the need to bring the perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these "reprehensible acts of terrorism" to justice.

In a statement read out in a council meeting on behalf of the council members, council president Emyr Jones Parry of the UK urged all states, in accordance with their obligations under international law and council resolutions to "cooperate actively" with the Algerian authorities in this regard.
The blast, which took place near the prime minister's office, killed over 30 civilians and injured hundreds.

Parry said the council reaffirmed that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations "constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, and that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed." He said the council further reaffirmed the need to combat by all means, in accordance with the UN Charter, threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts.

It reminded states, at the same time, that they must ensure that any measures taken to combat terrorism comply with all their obligations under international law, in particular international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law.

The council expressed its deep sympathy and condolences to the victims, their families and to the people and government of Algeria.

The council acts only at the request of a member state. Algeria sent a letter to Parry earlier in the day seeking council action on the blasts. Morocco, which also witnessed terrorist acts the day before, did not.

Diplomats said the council is discussing a statement to be issued soon condemning the blasts that took place in the Iraqi Parliament Thursday.

UN Security Council strongly condemns suicide attacks in Algiers

[Al-khiyal]

RABAT, April 13 (KUNA) -- Morocco's King Mohammed VI sent on Friday his deepest condolences to the Algerian President Abdul-Aziz Bouteflika and to the Algerian people on the occasion of the terrorist bombings of government buildings in the Algerian capital two days ago.

The Moroccan King strongly condemned those acts of terror which, he said, were not only intended to hurt Algeria alone but also aimed at causing harm to Morocco as well.

The Moroccan King explained that stability and security in Algeria is part of the security and stability of Morocco and all of the northern African countries.
The Moroccan leader also asserted his full support to the Algerian leadership and people.

Moroccan King sends his condolences to Algerian President

[Al-khiyal]

Russia supports the UN Security Council's decision to condemn the recent terror acts in the Algerian capital, which have claimed 33 lives, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.

The latest terror attack in Algeria "strengthens the determination to combat this evil without compromise both on a multilateral and bilateral basis," Lavrov was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying, when meeting with his Algerian counterpart Mohamed Bedjaoui in Moscow.

"The combat of terrorism is an important part of Russian-Algerian cooperation that encompasses many spheres. Our cooperation has got an impulse after the summit, when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Algeria. The reached accords are being successfully fulfilled, but much remains to be done," Lavrov said.

Bedjaoui said that any forms of terrorism are unacceptable, and "we should join efforts in the struggle against its expressions."

Thirty-three people were killed in two bomb blasts which hit the Algerian capital Algiers on Wednesday. One of the explosion rocked the prime minister's headquarters in central Algiers, Algeria's Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni told the press on Thursday.

Nearly 60 of the injured were still in hospital, he added.

Russian President Putin sent on Wednesday his condolences to Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika over the deadly explosions in Algiers.

The terror blasts have drawn an international chorus of condemnation.

Russia vows to enhance cooperation with Algeria in fight against terror

[Al-khiyal]

Algeria will not let itself be dragged again into a "Salafist age of darkness", Mourad Bencheikh, Algeria's ambassador to South Africa, said in the wake of bombings that left a trail of death and terror in Algiers this week.

The terrorist attacks, carried out in the kamikaze style that has become a trademark of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, have raised fears of a possible return to bloody political conflict of the 1990s.

Algeria descended into violence in 1992 when the then military-backed authorities scrapped a parliamentary election an Islamist political party was set to win. Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed.

Fears of a return to such traumatic times were expressed by the daily Liberté, which said in an article yesterday that the Algiers attacks had "woken the demons of a violence we believed had been contained".

Bencheikh believes that although terrorism is a real threat, not only to Algeria but also to the rest of the international community, the chances of a resurgence of a 1990s-like reign of terror in his country are minimal.

"The context today is different from that of the 1990s," he says. "Algeria has been modernising since the beginning of the new century.

"Two democratic elections have since been organised, and the will of the Algerian people today is to reject the use violence in any form for political gain."

Bencheikh says this will was expressed clearly in September 2005 when an impressive 97% of Algerian voters heeded the call by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to vote in favour of the draft charter for peace and reconciliation. The charter was later passed into law by the country's parliament.

One of its main feature is an ambitious amnesty programme that saw Bouteflika pardon prominent members of former terrorist groups such as the Islamic Salvation Front .

The text was seen as the best option for Algeria's continued process of peace building and stability enforcement.

"This is a clear sign that we have turned the page of political violence," Bencheikh insists.

"There is no going back to the dark age of terror."

The Algerian diplomat also says that condemnation of the attacks by Algeria's Islamic coalition is a positive indication the bombings were the deeds of a "lunatic fringe" of Islamists that will remain sidelined in the country's politics.

"Those behind the attacks are among Islamist groups that see an element of extraneousness to democratic advancement made in Maghreb," he says.

Terrorism experts warn that the attacks signalled a wider resurgence of Islamist militancy in the region that can spread to countries such as Tunisia, Libya and further south to the Sahel - an arid strip along the southern Sahara that stretches across six countries from Senegal to Chad.

"We now have a belt which extends from Morocco to Somalia," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist at the Swedish National Defence College.

"The key question is: are they going to internationalise that even further, with action in France for example or attacks on French interests, or actions in Spain by Moroccans?" Ranstorp says.

Bencheikh says tremendous efforts are being made at regional level to contain the spread of al-Qaeda's influence.

No return to "Salafist age of darkness"

[Al-khiyal]

ALGIERS, Algeria: The head of the Grand Mosque of Algiers on Friday condemned coordinated suicide bombings in Algeria that killed 33 people, saying the attackers do not represent Muslim values.

Cheikh Ali Sediki said Wednesday's attacks — on the prime minister's office and a suburban police station — "bring only bad things on Algeria and Islam" and called on Algerians to come together to turn the page on an Islamic insurgency that peaked in the 1990s.

"We forcefully condemn the barbaric explosions that shed the blood of innocents and that we consider an attack against the Muslim people of Algeria," he said, speaking before the traditional Friday prayer.

The imam called the attackers youths "who do not understand true Islam."

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for the attacks. The group was built on the foundations of the Algerian insurgency group that fought to try to topple the nation's secular government.

The insurgency broke out in 1992, and over the years an estimated 200,000 people — including militants, security forces and civilians — were killed. Until recently, attacks had been waning.

Head of Grand Mosque of Algiers condemns deadly terror attacks