Al-Qaida Says It Carried Out Algerian Bombings

Al-Qaida's purported North African wing has claimed responsibility for two deadly suicide bomb attacks in Algeria, reinforcing fears that jihadi militants have opened a new frontline in the Maghreb.

At least 30 people died on Saturday and 50 were injured when a hijacked delivery van packed with explosives smashed through a barrier at a coastguard barracks at Dellys, east of Algiers. The bombing appeared timed to kill as many officers as possible, when they were grouped together to raise the national flag.

Last Thursday, 22 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when a man detonated a bomb in a crowd waiting to meet President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Batna, also east of the capital. That was an apparent assassination attempt, but the attacker was spotted by the crowd, and set off the device before Mr Bouteflika arrived. Algerian security named the man as Bellazrak Houari, 20, and said he had been on their wanted list since 2006.

In an internet statement, the al-Qaida Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb (North Africa) said it was trying to target police and security forces "in defence of Islam and the Islamic nation", not innocent people. "We swear to God to continue sacrificing our lives until you stop supporting the crusaders in their war, apply Islamic tenets, and stop your war against God's religion," it stated.

The two incidents brought furious condemnation from the Algerian government and trade unions, with thousands of demonstrators on the streets of Algiers and other cities yesterday to hear speakers including the prime minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem denouncing the attacks as "contrary to the values of Islam".

Analysts said the Dellys atrocity was similar to the July bombing of a barracks in Lakhdaria, also claimed by al-Qaida.

Intelligence services are divided about the nature of terrorist activity in the region. On one view, it is still linked directly to the bloody civil war of the 1990s and is carried out for local reasons by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).

But earlier this year the GSPC pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed itself the al-Qaida Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb. Last September 11, al-Qaida's number two, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, released a videotaped message saying Bin Laden had personally approved the "blessed union".

President Bouteflika has vowed to pursue his controversial policy of national reconciliation, aiming to grant amnesty to Islamist activists who renounce the violence that killed some 200,000 people in the 1990s. About 2,000 have been freed from prison.