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September 8, 2007
Algeria: Islamists Kill 50 In Two Days
On Thursday, a suicide bomber lay in wait for Algeria's president Abdelaziz Bouteflika as the leader visited the town of Batna in eastern Algeria, 270 miles southeast of the capital, Algiers. The bomber hid in the crowd, with his bomb apparently held in a plastic bag. Before the president arrived, the suspicions of the crowd caused him to set off his bomb (above). Initial estimates of the dead varied, but the figure is now thought to have been at least 22. A hundred or so people were injured. Most of the dead and injured were people waiting to see the president. On TV, shortly after the Batna bombing, Bouteflika (below left) condemned the attack. He visited the injured in hospital.
News on the Batna attack is carried by AFP, Reuters, Xinhua and Associated Press.
Today, a second bomb has been detonated at a barracks housing coast guard officials at Dellys, 30 miles east of Algiers on the coast. News comes from AFP, Assocoated Press, Reuters, Al Jazeera and the Guardian.
Around 60 people were injured in today's blast, which is thought to have been caused by a car bomb. Eyewitnesses claimed that around 8 am this morning, a van which regularly delivers supplies to the Dellys barracks smashed through the rear entrance and traveled 20 yards into the compound before blowing up. The mortality is higher than Thursday's bomb - at least 28 people died today, but that figure is set to rise.
The van had been captured by terrorists before it carried out its usual delivery, its driver kidnapped, and the vehicle filled with explosives. The government has blamed Islamists for both the bomb attacks.
Today, Abdelaziz Belkhadem, the prime minister, said: "Those who carried out these attacks have failed for the past 17 years in their hopeless attempt to shake the stability of this country, and they will never succeed."
As part of a reconciliation process, about 2,000 jailed Islamists have been freed, and 300 more handed themselves in to the authorities, to gain amnesty. In April, a car bomb killed 33 people in Algiers, and in July, 10 soldiers were killed when a truck bomb was used to attack a barracks at Lakhdaria, 62 miles east of Algiers.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at September 8, 2007 3:11 PM
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