Timeline: Terror Attacks in Africa

April 2007

Two near-simultaneous bomb blasts in Algiers, one targeting the office of the prime minister, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, killed at least 30 people.

September 2006

Eleven people were killed in a failed assassination attempt on Somalia's transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, with the president's brother and six of the attackers among the dead. The attack was blamed on the Islamic Courts Union, which controlled Mogadishu between the summer of 2006 and the end of that year.

April 2006

Bombings at three locations in the Egyptian resort city of Dahab killed 23 people, including three foreigners. More than 80, including many foreign tourists, were injured. Security officials blame an Islamist group.

July 2005

Sixty-three people, including 11 Britons, died and more than 100 were injured by bombings in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Two of the attacks were suicide car bombings, while a third device was planted. An Islamist group claimed responsibility.

April 2005

Three foreign tourists were killed by a suicide bomber at the Khan al-Khalili market in Cairo. Three weeks later, a bomb was detonated in another incident linked to the same militant group and a tourist coach was sprayed with bullets. There were no fatalities in those attacks.

October 2004

Three terror attacks in resorts and hotels in Taba and near Nuweiba in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, killed 34 people and injured 159. They were the first terror attacks in Egypt since the 1997 killings in Luxor (see below).

May 2003

Thirty-three people were killed and more than 100 injured by five almost simultaneous suicide bomb attacks on "western and Jewish" targets in Casablanca. Twelve of the 14 bombers, who were all Moroccan and had alleged links to al-Qaida, died in the attacks.

November 2002

A suicide car bomb exploded at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombassa, killing three Israelis and ten Kenyans. Minutes earlier, a surface-to-air missile had narrowly missed a plane flying to Tel Aviv from the nearby Moi airport.

April 2002 Twenty-one people were killed and more than 30 injured after a natural gas truck loaded with explosives was driven into the Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba.

Fourteen German tourists, six Tunisians and one Frenchman died. Christian Ganczarski, a German national and a Muslim convert arrested at a French airport in 2003, is suspected of planning the attack.

August 1998

Two huge bombs exploded near the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, within minutes of each other. The blasts killed 264 people and injured thousands. Twelve Americans were among the dead.

The attacks were blamed on local supporters of Osama bin Laden, and brought his name to international prominence for the first time. In retaliation, the Clinton administration controversially hit a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, claiming the building was helping the al-Qaida leader to build chemical weapons. It later became clear that the evidence for such a link was weak.

November 1997

Sixty-two people, including 58 foreign tourists, were murdered at an archaeological site across the Nile from Luxor, Egypt. Six gunmen, later linked to al-Qaida, posed as security forces before attacking the Hatshepsut temple, gunning down tourists indiscriminately. Thirty-five of the victims were Swiss, ten were Japanese and six were British. All the gunmen died after Egyptian security forces arrived.