Explosions in Algeria leave 24 dead

BERLIN — Al-Qaida'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 injured in bombings at the prime minister's headquarters and a police base.

The strikes in Algiers 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-Qaida'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 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 was heavily damaged. It was the first major bombing in the heavily protected capital since the mid-1990s.

Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem was unhurt and called the attack a "betrayal" of an amnesty program that has resulted in the release of hundreds of insurgents from prison in an attempt to bring peace.

A representative of a group calling itself al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb asserted responsibility for the 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.

The group also posted an Internet statement giving details of the operation and photos of three purported bombers. It said the "martyrs" drove explosives-filled trucks into three targets: the government palace in Algiers, a police special-forces barracks in the suburb of Bab Ezzouar and what it asserted was a regional headquarters for Interpol, according to a translation of the statement by the SITE Institute, a Washington-based terrorism-research organization.

The Algerian press agency reported that only the Government Palace and the police barracks were attacked.

In Morocco, government investigators said they had found no operational links between the attacks in Algiers and the suicide bombers in Casablanca. At a news conference, Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said the timing of the plots may have been coincidental, but concerning a connection, "We don't rule it out."

Authorities in Casablanca said the explosions occurred after police surrounded four wanted terrorism suspects in an apartment building. Three blew themselves up with explosives-laden belts after they emerged from the building; a police sniper killed the fourth man before he could detonate his bomb.

Moroccan police said they were tracking the suspects in the belief they were accomplices of a man who blew himself up March 11 at an Internet cafe in Casablanca, injuring four people. Authorities have arrested 31 suspected members of the cell, which they believe planned to attack tourist sites, and are seeking three others, according to the Interior Ministry.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb was formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, a local network that fought unsuccessfully for years to topple the secular Algerian government. An estimated 200,000 people have died since that conflict broke out in 1992.

In September, al-Qaida's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, announced in a videotaped speech that his movement had struck a formal partnership with the Algerian group and urged it to broaden its targets to include France and the United States.

Algerian officials had called the partnership the last gasp of a dying insurgency, but the group has displayed renewed strength in Algeria and has partnered with radical groups in Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania and Morocco, according to U.S. and North African counterterrorism officials.