Al Qaeda campaign feared in N. Africa

A pair of suicide bombings that killed at least 24 people here Wednesday have heightened fears of a coordinated offensive by Al Qaeda-linked groups against North Africa’s governments and their Western allies, intelligence officials said.

The attacks, which struck a building housing the prime minister’s office in Algiers, as well as a suburban police station, were the first major bombings in the Algerian capital for several years. They came amid a recent rise in Islamic militant activity in the North African region known as the Maghreb, including bombings in neighboring Morocco.

Responsibility for the bombings was claimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an Islamist group that has pledged loyalty to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“With a suicide attack in the heart of Algiers, you have an escalation to a new level,” said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France’s top antiterrorism magistrate. “It’s unquestionably an attempt at destabilization and a sign of the emergence of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb as an organization.”

In Washington, officials said the attacks were part of a spate of incidents that showed a sharp and troubling escalation of terrorist activity in the region.

“When there is an attempt made with the prime minister as the likely target, of course it is significant,” said one U.S. counter-terrorism official. “But I don’t want to overstretch it and say that these things came out of the blue. There is a context of militancy [in Algeria] and the government is plainly aware of it and has taken steps against it.”

A Renault sedan rigged with explosives struck the primary entrance to Algiers’ main government building, a modern office tower called the Government Palace. It killed at least 12 people and wounded 135, according to the nation’s official news agency.

The explosion shook the entire district.

“I believed that it was an earthquake,” said a college student who gave his name only as Messaoud.

The blast incinerated bodies, shattered windows and sent a huge plume of black smoke into the sky.

“We had arrived among the first, to help the casualties,” said a 30-year-old district resident who gave only his first name, Yacine. “I saw several burnt cars and three bodies of women blackened by the flames.”

Rescue workers carried away victims covered in blood. Yellow ambulances sped to and from hospitals and sirens screamed throughout the city. Rumors of more bombings spread as panicked residents fled from a scene that evoked dark memories of the country’s 1990s civil war.

Arabic TV news channels showed footage of weeping residents crowded in front of a government office seeking information about loved ones.

“They are criminals who want to sabotage the country,” a young woman in front of the hospital shouted angrily. “May God almighty punish them and send them to hell.”

The other bombing struck a police station east of the capital in the suburb of Bab Ezzouar, killing at least 12 and injuring 87, the Algerie Presse Service said, citing civil defense officials.

Al Jazeera television said a caller claimed responsibility for the near-simultaneous attacks on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The channel also reported that the group had posted Internet messages taking responsibility for the attacks, along with photos of three people it said had carried out the bombings. Two of them wore green scarves over their faces.

The caller to Al Jazeera, who called himself Abu Mohammed Salah, said 1,500 pounds of explosives was used in the downtown Algiers bombing.

He said Al Qaeda would continue its operations “to liberate every acre of the lands of Islam ... and liberate our men in prisons in Tunisia and Algeria,” Al Jazeera reported.

The attacks strike at a country still struggling to overcome its civil war between home-grown Islamic activists and the secular government.

Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem, who was not hurt in the attack, called it “a criminal and cowardly act perpetrated at the time when the Algerian people are seeking national reconciliation,” the news agency said.

The oil-rich North African country is preparing for May 17 parliamentary elections meant to push the country toward peace.

In 1992, the army canceled elections that Islamist activists were poised to win, setting off the civil war that left more than 150,000 dead. The violence has tapered off in recent years, but occasional bombings and assassinations still occur.

Only one militant group remains -- the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, which last year changed its name and swore allegiance to Al Qaeda.

The government recently launched attacks on the group’s suspected eastern Algerian strongholds near Kabylia. The Interior Ministry, which includes the counter-terrorism unit that launched those attacks, is in the Government Palace.

“It is clear that for the past month or so there has been an increase in clashes between the security forces and the Al Qaeda in Algeria in the Kabylia region, with the regime engaging in some very intense fighting,” said William Quandt, an Algeria specialist at the University of Virginia. “So this could be a warning from the Al Qaeda group to back off in Kabylia.”

Although some Algerian officials dismissed the significance of the attack, experts said it was notable because it showed a capacity to operate in the heavily policed Algerian capital.

The network recently has carried out small attacks on police and military targets around the country, and dramatized its declaration of allegiance to Al Qaeda’s global agenda by attacking convoys of U.S. and Russian companies in Algiers.

The use of suicide bombers shows the group has been developing urban operatives, said Louis Caprioli, a former anti-terrorism chief of France’s DST intelligence agency.

“This shows their ‘Al Qaedazation,’ ” he said. “I make a difference between the guerrilla fighters, who have great military experience and are unlikely to be sacrificed, and these operatives who are recruited and trained and are ready to die.”

Investigators have been trying to determine whether Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has achieved coordination across North African borders.

Islamic militants with purported ties to Al Qaeda have launched numerous attacks in North Africa, including bombings in Tunisia and Egypt.

In Morocco, four suspected Islamic militants and a police officer were killed this week during a confrontation in the city of Casablanca.

The simultaneous activity in Algeria and Morocco comes out of a common project and advances the Islamic groups toward the stated goal of regional unity, said Bruguiere, the French antiterrorism magistrate.

“Certainly the two incidents are related, even if there is not a direct operational link,” Bruguiere said. “They are part of the same scenario envisioned by the leaders. And it’s a development that could have an impact in Europe as well.”

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daragahi@latimes.com

Special correspondent Ait-Larbi reported from Algiers and Times staff writer Daragahi from Cairo. Staff writers Sebastian Rotella in Paris and Josh Meyer in Washington, and special correspondents Noha el Hennawy in Cairo and Raed Rafei in Beirut contributed to this report.