17 Dead, 93 Hurt as 2 Car Bombs Rock Algiers

Two powerful car bombs in the Algerian capital killed 17 people and wounded 93 others Sunday as bloodshed deepened in a nation torn by Islamic insurgency.

The blasts--targeting a town hall and a building housing some of the nation’s main newspapers--undermined official efforts to use censorship to play down the 4-year-old conflict with Muslim rebels in which an estimated 40,000 people have died.

The first bomb Sunday morning shattered the town hall in Bab el Oued, a crowded working-class district.

A total of 41 people were wounded, six of them seriously, according to the latest official toll.

Seventeen people were killed and 52 injured when a second bomb exploded in the Belcourt quarter of the capital, according to official sources.

The bomb exploded as a minibus was passing a heavily guarded building known as La Maison de la Presse, which houses the main offices of major Algerian newspapers.

Witnesses said the explosion badly damaged the offices of the French-language daily Le Soir d’Algerie. It rocked the headquarters of the French-language newspapers Le Matin and L’Opinion, knocking out computers and newsroom equipment, and it shattered windows of the offices of the country’s main newspaper, El Watan.

“It was clear the car bomb was aimed at the newspapers,” a journalist said after visiting the site of the second blast.

The dead included at least one journalist, Mohamed Dorbane, and one newspaper employee, both of whom worked for Le Soir d’Algerie, journalists in Algiers said.

Islamic militants began intentionally targeting journalists as enemies of Islam in May 1993, and about 60 have been killed, most recently an Algerian newspaper editor shot to death Saturday.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for either bombing, but suspicion fell on Islamic militants trying to topple the military-backed government and replace it with strict Islamic rule.

The government, reacting to widening violence, on Saturday had ordered Algerian newspapers to submit reports on terrorism to a government censor.

“All information concerning terrorism and not issued by [Algeria Press Service], the official news agency, will be censored by the authorities,” newspapers reported Sunday.

Algerian journalists immediately decried the move, saying it was meant to distort the true magnitude of frequent clashes between Islamic militants and government security forces.

Diplomats in the past have said the fundamentalists use bomb attacks and killings of high-profile Algerians to ensure their assaults cannot be stifled by such censorship.