Bombers deliver a deadly warning

AL-QAEDA-linked militants again targeted a UN building in a double bombing attack and dragged Algeria back to its blood-soaked recent past yesterday.

At least one United Nations employee died and 13 were missing after blasts killed up to 67 people and destroyed several cars and buses.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said: "I have no doubt that the UN was targeted."

The bombs were set off by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), said the Algerian interior minister, Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, referring to the former name of al-Qaeda's North Africa wing.

"We are sure that the GSPC is behind it," Mr Zerhouni said, adding that the death toll stood at 22. A health ministry source said 67 people were killed in the explosions in affluent areas of Algiers. One of yesterday's blasts struck near the constitutional court building in the 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.

Marie Heuze, a spokeswoman for the world body in Geneva, said that if all the missing were dead, it would be the worst assault on the United Nations since a 2003 attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad killed the top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others.

In Ben Aknoun, people ran through the streets crying in panic and the wail of police sirens filled the air.

Several of the casualties were pupils on a school bus.

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 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."

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 as a radical Islamic party was poised to win. Up to 200,000 people were killed in the aftermath.

The violence has subsided since then, but a string of attacks this year, including an attack on 11 April that killed 33 in Algiers, has raised fears that the country could slip back into turmoil.

Some attacks or attempted attacks have occurred on the 11th of the month, in what Algerians interpret as a form of homage to the attacks on the United States on 11 September, 2001.

Western nations have expressed concern at militant Islamist activity throughout North Africa, and dependents of staff working for several western firms operating in Algeria have been repatriated over the past 12 months.

The 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-terrorist collaboration with Algeria.

Anis Rahmani editor of the daily newspaper Ennahar and a security specialist, said: "Al- Qaeda wanted to send a strong message that it is still capable despite the loss of several top leaders. Now the key problem is that social conditions are still offering chances for terrorists to hire new rebels.

"This is a problem that must be tackled if we want to defeat al- Qaeda."

TARGETING WESTERNERS

IN LATE January 2007, the group changed its name from GSPC to al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, after gaining the approval of Osama bin Laden.

The GSPC, as it was known by its French acronym, aimed to establish an Islamic state within Algeria and targeted westerners. Founded in 1998, it eclipsed the Armed Islamic Group to become the most effective remaining armed group in Algeria.

In 2003, GSPC kidnapped 32 European tourists in the Sahara. All were freed apart from one who died of heatstroke. In April 2007, 33 people were killed in Algiers in a triple suicide bombing.