129 Killed Or Wounded In Assasination Attempt On Algerian President
Yesterday we had this, and today we have this:
Agencies:
Fifteen people were killed and 114 injured in Algeria Thursday in a suicide bombing apparently aimed at President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algerian television reported.
Local security sources earlier gave a toll of 12 dead and 23 injured.
The bomber was part of a crowd awaiting a visit by the head of state in the eastern city of Batna.
Local police said a man, aged 30-35, had carried the explosive device in a bag into the middle of the crowd, which was waiting in front of Batna’s Al-Atik mosque.
Onlookers alerted police after determining the man was behaving strangely, the officials said.
As police moved in toward the man, he threw down the bag and tried to flee, and the explosion went off, the officials said. It was not immediately clear whether he died or was wounded in the attack.
It was the first attack to be carried out during a presidential visit in Algeria. Bouteflika was immediately informed and visited the victims in hospital.
Coordinated terror attacks killed dozens of people on April 11, when bombs ripped through the Algerian prime minister’s office and a police station in an Algiers suburb.
A new al-Qaida wing claimed responsibility for the April bombings, saying they were carried out by suicide bombers in trucks packed with explosives.
The group, al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, was built on the foundations of the Algerian insurgent group that fought to try to topple Algeria’s secular government.
Thursday’s attack comes five months after the April car bombings killed 33 people and injured more than 220 in Algiers.
And in July, 10 soldiers were killed and 35 people wounded when a suicide bomber rammed a truck packed with explosives into barracks southeast of Algiers.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which has pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed itself the Al-Qaeda Movement in the Islamic Countries of the Maghreb, claimed responsibility for those attacks.
The president later appeared on television to condemn the perpetrators as “criminals” and insist that his national reconciliation programme, which provides an amnesty for Islamic extremists who renounce violence, would continue.
“I will not for a single moment renounce the political project built on national reconciliation and security for all Algerians,” he said.
Algerian authorities have recently hardened their rhetoric against armed Islamists who refuse to join the programme.
“They should give themselves up or perish,” Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni said recently.
Earlier Thursday, Bouteflika told a meeting of war veterans in Batna that the national reconciliation programme was a “strategic choice by the Algerian people, an irreversible choice”.
He also stressed that such attacks “have absolutely nothing in common with the noble values of Islam”.
The attacks in Algeria, together with bombings in neighbouring Morocco, have revived Western fears of Islamist militants gaining a toehold in North Africa from which to launch attacks in Europe and beyond.
The blasts in Algeria have also raised a spectre of the return to the violence of the 1990s, that pitted the people against the hardline Armed Islamic Groups (GIA).
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15 deads 74 wonded
well, Algeria has a problem, Bouteflika, who handles the whole infrastructure : (alike, at a lesser point, Saddam ) his old back-guards of FLN members ; times have changed, the men originated from the Algerian independance are still there ! the disconteds of this has-been power have many opportunities to justify their terrorism goals ; the “in” movment AQ, is their nowadays opportunity
September 6th, 2007 at 2:33 pmIf he is alive, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when the Algerian police catch up with his ass. If they do, he’s going to have a real bad day.
September 6th, 2007 at 3:58 pm“He also stressed that such attacks “have absolutely nothing in common with the noble values of Islam”.”
These idiots still dont get it. The noble values of islam have been overcome by the sadistic and cruel practices of islam since the time of muhammed. they will never stamp out this menace until acknowledge the very real bolshevik style ideoology that exists in Islam and its teaching that there is nothing more noble than fight and kill in the name of Allah when you “perceive an injustice ” occuring. this dictum lends credence to the notion that any individual can deduce such a “calling ” from Allah and leads and has lead to the massive terrorist plots that have besieged north africa and the middle east for centuries.
September 6th, 2007 at 5:48 pmTJ:
They don’t even read their own Koran. Only the Caliphate can legally declare a Jihad. Not an individual group. Nor can any individual declare a fatwa. OBL & co are not authorized to do so.
In short these people are irhabi. Their jihad is hiraba. And therefore they are all mufisdoon destined for Jahannem.
September 6th, 2007 at 6:21 pmAnd there is no naksh in my last sentence. They are completely un-Koranic.
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September 7th, 2007 at 4:19 am