Berlin – Al-Qaeda’s new affiliate in North Africa asserted responsibility Wednesday for the deadliest attacks in Algeria’s capital in a decade as 24 people were reported killed and 222 hurt in bombings that shattered the prime minister’s headquarters and a police base.
The Algerian strikes came one day after four suicide bombers died in confrontations with police in Casablanca in neighboring Morocco.
Counterterrorism officials and analysts said the plots were the latest signs that local terrorist groups have escalated operations under al-Qaeda’s banner and warned that the North African networks are expanding their reach to Europe and Iraq.
“We’re seeing a new front opening up big time,” said Bruce Riedel, former senior Middle East analyst for the CIA and National Security Council. “The events in Morocco, but more clearly in Algiers, show al-Qaeda opening up a new front in the jihad. They were operating there before, but this is a declaration.”
The Algerian government has been fighting a bloody insurgency mounted by Islamic radicals since 1992, but authorities appeared stunned by a late-morning vehicle bomb attack on the Government Palace, which killed 12 people and wounded 135, according to the state-run APS news agency. Authorities said the toll was likely to rise. Two other targets were also struck.
Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem called the attack a “betrayal” of an amnesty program that has resulted in the release of hundreds of insurgents from prison in an effort to bring peace to the war-torn nation.
A representative of a group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb asserted responsibility for the Algerian bombings in a phone call to the Morocco bureau of al-Jazeera television, the network said. “Maghreb” is an Arabic word for the region of North Africa stretching from Mauritania to Libya.
