Al-Qaida ties suspected in deadly Algeria blasts

updated 12:19 p.m. ET Dec. 11, 2007

ALGIERS, Algeria - Car bombs exploded minutes apart Tuesday in central Algiers, heavily damaging U.N. offices and partly ripping the facade off a new government building. The interior minister said 26 people were killed, including U.N. workers, but hospital and rescue officials gave figures far higher.

Suspicions quickly focused on militants affiliated with al-Qaida, which claimed responsibility for attacking the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in 2003. The North African branch of al-Qaida claimed responsibility in a Web site posting Tuesday.

The two bombs exploded around 9:30 a.m., and one had deliberately targeted United Nations offices, according to the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Geneva. The other bomb struck outside Algeria’s Constitutional Council, said Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni.

The attacks killed 26 people, said an Interior Ministry statement Tuesday evening. It said the dead included two U.N. staffers, one Danish, the other Senegalese, as well as three people from Asia, although their nationalities were not given.

Hospital and rescue officials reported the death toll at 45, and one doctor said it was as high as 60.

U.N. spokeswoman Maria Okabe said in New York that preliminary information indicated four U.N. employees were among the dead. Ron Redmond, chief spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, said only two UNHCR staff members — both drivers from Algeria — were killed, and that more than a dozen workers were injured, one seriously. All missing employees were accounted for, he added.

A national official at the civil protection agency who spoke on condition of anonymity said earlier that 45 people were killed. A doctor at one Algiers hospital who said he was in contact with staff at other area hospitals put the death toll at 60.

'No doubt' U.N. targeted
UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres “said he has no doubt that the U.N. was targeted,” according to Redmond. He added that “it is a very small street that just separates a U.N. compound, and it happened right there.”

Slide show   Bombing in Algiers View immages from two car bomb attacks in the Algerian capital. more photos

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the bombings.

“This is just unacceptable,” said a somber Ban, who was on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali for a U.N. climate conference. “I would like to condemn it in the strongest terms. It cannot be justified in any circumstances.”

The Bush administration added its denunciation.

“We condemn this attack on the United Nations office by these enemies of humanity who attack the innocent. The United States stands with the people of Algeria, as well as the United Nations as they deal with this senseless violence,” said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Zerhouni said the attacks were caused by car bombs, with the one at the U.N. offices seemingly driven by a suicide bomber.

“An attack like this is among the easiest actions to carry out. I have always said that we are not safe from these sorts of attacks,” he told reporters.

Some victims were on school bus
The U.N. offices are in the upscale Hydra neighborhood of Algiers, which houses many foreign embassies and has a substantial foreign population. One damaged U.N. building appeared to have collapsed in on itself, spilling its insides into a street littered with the soot-covered remains of parked cars crunched by the force of the blast.

The blast at the Constitutional Council, which rules on the constitutionality of laws and oversees elections, ripped chunks off the white facade of the new building, exposing the red brick underneath, and left a hip-deep crater in the road.

Some victims had been riding a school bus, the official APS news agency said, and the remains of an orange bus were outside the Constitutional Council building.

Al-Qaida has called for attacks on French and Spanish interests in North Africa. Osama bin Laden’s chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, in September called for jihad in North Africa to “cleanse (it) of the children of France and Spain.”

It was not immediately clear why the U.N. might have been targeted.

Tuesday’s date — Dec. 11 — could point to an Islamic terrorism link. Al-Qaida has struck on the 11th in several countries, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for attacks on April 11 that hit the Algerian prime minister’s office and a police station, killing 33 people.

MORE FROM MIDEAST & N. AFRICA

Mideast & N. Africa Section Front

U.S. releases Iranian officials held in Iraq Israel's Netanyahu invites Abbas to talk peace Israeli spy memorial hides more than it reveals   Rights group worries about Iran missing Sept. may bring push for Iran sanctions Tehran police chief: Few arrests in protest Freed journalist describes Iran jail Mideast & N. Africa Section Front   Add Mideast & N. Africa headlines to your news reader: