Two car bombs struck central Algiers yesterday, killing up to 67 people, destroying United Nations offices and targeting a bus full of law students outside the Supreme Court in a coordinated strike blamed on al-Qaeda.

The destruction raised the spectre of a return to the civil war that ravaged the North African country in the 1990s. At least two of the dead were foreigners — a Senegalese and a Dane working for the UN.

As rescuers pulled out six people alive from the rubble, the UN said that at least 11 of its employees had died. More than 170 people were injured. The Government confirmed that 26 people had died in the blasts.

Commentators said that the targets appeared to confirm al-Qaeda’s plan to subsume Algeria’s internal conflict into its war on the West. The date — December 11 — also pointed to Osama bin Laden’s signature, they said.

Al-Qaeda’s North African wing issued an internet statement later claiming responsibilty for the attack, which it said involved cars loaded with 800kg of explosives each. The group posted pictures of what it said were the two suicide bombers. No independent verification of the statement was immediately available.

Targeting symbols of the international community and the Algerian establishment, one bomb tore apart buildings containing the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees and Development Programme. The second attack occurred minutes later when a car packed with explosives was driven into a bus full of law students outside the Algerian Supreme Court.

“It was like an earthquake,” said Ameur Rekhaila, a lawyer standing in front of the blood-stained wreckage of the Supreme Court building, which was inaugurated in September. “I saw emergency workers come out of the court carrying bagfuls of human remains,” said Kamal, a shop worker.

The blast left a large crater outside the court house and a body covered with a white blanket lay on the road.

The charred remains of the students’ bus was a testimony to the violence of the explosions, which shattered windows and sent debris spraying across pavements. Witnesses described their shock at the moment the bomber struck. “I ran out of my office when the first bomb went off and I was just getting out when the second one exploded. I was thrown onto the ground and a wall fell on me,” said one man.

Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, the Interior Minister, said that a suicide bomber appeared to have been responsible for the attack on the UN offices.

President Bush, President Sarkozy of France and Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, led international condemnation. “We condemn this attack on the United Nations office by these enemies of humanity who attack the innocent,” the White House said in a statement.

Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UNHCR, said that the blast had “caused extensive damage. It was a huge explosion and our people are in great shock.” The bombings follow a resurgence of terrorist activity in a country, which is still recovering from a civil war between the Government and Islamic radicals, which cost up to 200,000 lives in the 1990s.

Many attacks have been perpetrated on the 11th of the month in what appears to be a grisly reminder of 9/11. On April 11, bombs killed 33 people in Algiers in co-ordinated blasts that foreshadowed yesterday’s outrage.

Three months later eight people died in an explosion at an army barracks. In September President Boute-flika was the target of a suicide bomber which killed 20 people.

The renewal of terrorist activity came after Algeria’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) pledged allegiance to Bin Laden on September 11, 2006, and changed its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in January.

Al-Qaeda's trail of terror

September 8, 2007 Thirty-two dead and forty-five injured in a car bomb attack on a barracks in Dellys, a port in the Kabylie region. Claimed by al-Qaeda

September 6 A suicide attack on the motorcade of President Bouteflika at Batna, in the east of the country, kills 22 people and injures more than 100. The President escapes unharmed, al-Qaeda claims responsibility

July 11 A lorry loaded with explosives rams into army barracks in Lakhadria, southeast of Algiers, killing ten soldiers and injuring thirty-five. Al-Qaeda claims responsibility

April 11 Two simultaneous explosions in Algiers kill at least 30 people and leave 200 injured. Al-Qaeda claims the attacks on the Government’s city-centre headquarters and a police station in an eastern suburb

February 13 Seven synchronised bombs explode in the northern region of Kabylie, killing six people in an attack also claimed by al-Qaeda

October 30, 2006 Two car bomb attacks outside police stations in the eastern suburbs of Algiers kill three and injure 24. Al-Qaeda in North Africa claims responsibility

March 12, 2004 Four soldiers and five Islamic militants are killed in a bomb attack on an army convoy travelling through Tebessa, in eastern Algeria

Source: agencies; Times archives

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