Explosions rock Algerian capital

[Theobald]

Explosions rock Algerian capital

Two blasts in Algeria's capital Algiers have killed at least 23 people and injured 160 - one exploding near the prime minister's office.


A caller claiming to represent al-Qaeda in the Maghreb told an Arabic TV channel that his group had carried out the attacks.
There has been no independent verification of the claim.
Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, who was unharmed, called the attacks a "cowardly and criminal act".
The official APS agency, quoting the Algerian authorities, said at least 12 people were killed and 118 injured in the attack on the government building and 11 people were killed and 44 injured in the second attack, on a police station in the eastern district of Bab Ezzouar.

'Cowardice and betrayal'

The violence in Algiers comes a day after the authorities in neighbouring Morocco, said they had foiled a plot to target foreign and strategic interests by suicide bombers. Three suspects blew themselves up after being pursued by the authorities, and a fourth was shot dead by police. It also follows clashes with militants in Tunisia earlier this year. Violent attacks have been increasing in Algeria since the main Islamist rebel group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), changed its name to the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb in January.

Al-Jazeera TV said this was the group that had claimed responsibility for Wednesday's violence.
BBC Arab Affairs analyst Magdi Abdelhadi says many analysts will link the surge in violence with the ambitions of the Algerian hardline organisation to spread its campaign to neighbouring countries.
The city centre explosion was so loud it could be heard up to 10km (six miles) away, residents said.
Government employees were injured by flying glass and debris, which spread up to 300m (yards) from the site of the blasts.
Ambulances went to the scene and police blocked entry to the prime minister's office, which also houses the offices of the interior minister.
Speaking on Algerian radio, Mr Belkhadem denounced the bombings, which come as the government says it is working towards national reconciliation.
"This is a crime, a cowardly act," Mr Belkhadem said.

Alarm bells
Our analyst says the attacks are a serious blow for the Algerian authorities which have for years fought Islamist militants. Despite an amnesty announced two years ago, the violence in Algeria has never completely died down since its height in the mid-1990s.

The latest scenes of blood on the streets of Algiers will revive painful memories of that civil strife that lasted for a decade and left an estimated 150,000 people dead.
Magdi Abdelhadi says the spectre of a resurgent al-Qaeda operating in North Africa, close to Europe's southern border, will send the alarm bells ringing in European capitals. It may also have a devastating impact on the prospect of more open and democratic societies in the region. He says that like in other Arab states, the authorities have used the threat of terror in the past to curb civil and political freedoms.

[Theobald]

Algeria fighting leaves 15 dead

At least nine Algerian soldiers and six Islamists have been killed in clashes, the authorities say.


At least five soldiers had been injured in the clashes, in a wooded area west of the capital Algiers, officials said.
There has been an increase in insurgent attacks in recent months after a period of calm in the North African country.
According to government figures at least 200,000 people have died in the Islamist insurgency, which began in 1992 after the army cancelled polls.

No surrender

The armed insurgents had ambushed a military patrol in the Zaccar forest in the Ain Defla region on Saturday, security officials said, killing the soldiers during a gun battle.
They said the rebels had been killed when backup troops arrived to help the soldiers, AP news agency reports.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
At least 33 people have died in rebel clashes in April, according to figures from AFP news agency. Last August, Algeria offered Islamist militants a six-month amnesty on condition of surrender, but fewer than 300 came forward.

[Errigal]

I am always suspicious when al-Qaeda is mentioned. What is it really anyway? Is al-Qaeda an organization, a philosophy, a lie made up by others or all three? It is not like al-Qaeda is like Coca-Cola and can sue anyone who uses its name without permission.

[Theobald]

Originally Posted by A Few Acres of Snow

I am always suspicious when al-Qaeda is mentioned. What is it really anyway? Is al-Qaeda an organization, a philosophy, a lie made up by others or all three? It is not like al-Qaeda is like Coca-Cola and can sue anyone who uses its name without permission.

In my opinion Al-Qaeda is like an Islamic label that local terrorist movements use to draw mediatic attention.
You have the GIA and the GSPC (his new official name is the "Al-Qaeda group in Maghreb") in Algeria, the Salafia Jihadia in Morocco, the Jamaah Islamiya in Indonesia, ... They all have their own organization, their own tactics and their own goals. I don't think al-Qaeda's leaders have any responsibility for particular, local attacks.

[Marcus Marulus]

Something new, interesting, related to these news:

NEWS FEATURE: Alarm in Spain over al-Qaeda call for its "reconquest"

By Sinikka Tarvainen, dpa


Madrid (dpa) - The emergence of a new al-Qaeda-linked organization in Northern Africa is alarming Spain, which is concerned about Islamists' calls for the reconquest of the country they regard as a lost part of the Muslim world.

"We will not be in peace until we set our foot again in our beloved al-Andalus," al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said on claiming responsibility for an attack which killed at least 24 people in Algiers on Wednesday.

Al-Andalus is the Moorish name for Spain, parts of which were ruled by Muslims for about eight centuries until the last Moorish bastion, Granada, succumbed to the Christian Reconquest in 1492.

The terrorists will undoubtedly attempt to extend their offensive from Northern Africa to European soil, anti-terrorism judge Baltasar Garzon warned, cautioning that Spain was at a "very high risk" of suffering an Islamist attack.

The reference to al-Andalus was not the first by al-Qaeda, which has also vowed to put an end to the Spanish "occupation" of the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the Moroccan coast.

Such announcements worry the security services in Spain, where 29 mainly Moroccan suspects are on trial for the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 and injured about 1,800 people.

The bombings were mainly a reaction to the war alliance of Spain's former conservative government with the United States in Iraq, but some of the terrorists are also known to have dreamed of reconquering al-Andalus.

The bloodbath in Algiers could launch a new string of attacks in Northern Africa and Europe, including Spain, terrorism expert Fernando Reinares warned.

Al-Qaeda is extending its activities in Northern Africa, where the Algiers bombings were preceded by the suicides of three Moroccan Islamists who blew themselves up to avoid being captured by police on Tuesday.

The Algerian-based al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), intends to federate North African Islamist cells under a common umbrella.

Some of the people who could attack Spain may already be in the country, where nearly 80 per cent of prison inmates jailed on charges related to international terrorism have come from Northern Africa over the past five years.

Islamist radicals proselytize at an estimated 10 per cent of Spain's hundreds of unofficial mosques, which operate in garages, basements and the like.

Spain has become an important base for the recruitment of suicide bombers who are sent to Iraq, according to press reports. Some of the fighters are believed to be trained in new al-Qaeda camps in Sahel countries such as Mali, Niger or Mauritania.

The Madrid train bombings appear to have been organized by a home- grown Islamist cell with the backing of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM).

Ceuta and Melilla, which have sizeable Muslim populations, could well be the next targets, judge Garzon warned.

[source]

[Marcus Marulus]

Bombers seek "second Iraq" in Alageria: Islamist

Mon Apr 16, 2007


By Lamine Chikhi
ALGIERS (Reuters) - The founder of the group that claimed responsibility for last week's deadly Algiers bombings called on militants to put down their weapons under a government amnesty and stop trying to turn Algeria into a "second Iraq".
Hassan Hattab made the comments in a letter to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika published on Monday by Echorouk daily after three bombs exploded in Algiers on Wednesday killing 33 people. He described the group that claimed responsibility for the bombings, which changed its name in January from the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) to al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, as "a small group that wants to transform Algeria into a second Iraq".

"I call on the militants to give up the fight," he said.
"We urge the president to reopen the national reconciliation file and extend its deadline. I can thump those seeking to take Algeria to its painful past," he added without elaborating.
Hattab remains an influential figure among Islamist fighters even though the group he helped found is now headed by another man, Abdelmalek Droudkel, also known as Abu Musab Abdul Wadud. The explosions raised fears that the north African oil- and gas-exporting country might return to the intense political violence of the 1990s when tens of thousands of Islamist guerrillas fought the army to try to set up Islamic rule.

Bouteflika, who has yet to directly comment on the attacks, offered an amnesty for rebels last year as part of a reconciliation policy aimed at ending years of violence.
More than 2,000 rebels were freed from jail and dozens of fighters surrendered under the amnesty, which lasted from late February to late August 2006.
Droudkel has rejected the amnesty offer and it is not known whether Hattab himself has officially accepted amnesty. But speculation Hattab had won some sort of accommodation with the government arose last year when he gave an interview in Algeria to the Asharq al-Awsat daily supporting the amnesty.

Algeria plunged into conflict when militants unleashed a holy war or jihad after the army cancelled elections in 1992, which the radical Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was set to win.
Authorities then feared an Iranian style revolution and up to 200,000 people were killed during the Islamic uprising.
The GSPC was formed in 1998 when Hattab broke away from the Armed Islamic Group in protest at its massacres of civilians. He said the GSPC would focus its attacks on police and soldiers. ORIGINAL ISLAMIST REBELS CONDEMN ATTACKS

FIS founders Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj also condemned the attacks. "Al Qaeda made a big mistake in using violence in a country in desperate need of a political solution," Madani, who lives in Qatar, was quoted as telling daily El Khabar.
The FIS remains banned.
Visiting Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said after meeting his Algerian counterpart Mohamed Bedjaoui: "The attacks in Algiers) show fundamentalist terrorism is not just the enemy of the West, it's the enemy of progress and democracy in the Arab world. We are all at risk." "The problem is isolating and fighting these terrorist groups to avoid that a disease that appeared to have been eradicated in Algeria comes back as a dangerous threat."

[source]

[Franze]

The islamist problem would be very good for Europe because such things like the mason properties of Morocco have to be sold and this Morocco would be an islamist country with the king beheaded.
The islamism would be very good because the muslims soon would lose the hope in islam, because islam is ruling. Now, islam like judaism in the Christ´s times, were the hope of these people.