Car bombs exploded minutes apart yesterday in central Algiers, heavily damaging UN offices and ripping the facade off the wing of a new government building. Officials said 67 people were killed and dozens more injured.
Suspicions quickly focused on the Algerian wing of Al-Qaida. The date - the 11th - could point to an Islamic terror link. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for attacks on April 11 that hit the prime minister's office and a police station, killing 33 people.
One staff member for the UN refugee agency was killed and 12 others from various other UN bodies were missing, said Marie Heuze, spokeswoman for the world body in Geneva. She said if all the missing were dead, it would be the deadliest assault on the UN since a 2003 attack on UN headquarters in Baghdad that killed top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others.
"We are looking through the rubble for people," Jean Fabre, of the UN Development Program in Geneva, said after speaking with Marc Destanne De Bernis, the agency's top official in the Algerian capital.
The bombs exploded around 9:30 am (4:30 pm yesterday Beijing time) and one blew the front off the UN refugee agency building, said UNHCR chief spokesman Ron Redmond. It also caused "considerable damage" to the main UN building housing the UN Development Program and other agencies across the street.
"We can't even say for certain that the UN was being targeted, but one can certainly start to draw that conclusion since this explosion took place in a very narrow street right between two UN buildings," Redmond told CNN.
World leaders roundly condemned the attack. US President George W. Bush extended condolences for those killed in "this horrible bombing," said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner condemned the attacks as "barbarity" and said that while Algeria had made great progress in fighting terrorism, "the sordid beast is not yet dead."
The UN offices are in the upscale Hydra neighborhood of Algiers, which houses many foreign embassies and has a substantial foreign population. One damaged UN building appeared to have collapsed in on itself, spilling its insides into a street littered with the soot-covered remains of parked cars crunched by the force of the blast.
At least 15 people were killed in the Hydra attack, said a national official at the civil protection agency who spoke on condition of anonymity. The other attack, which killed at least 30 people, was in the Ben Aknoun neighborhood of Algiers, where the Constitutional Council is located, said the official.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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