Toll rises to 33 in Algeria blasts

The death toll from the suicide bombings in Algeria rose Thursday to 33, the government said, and police rolled out in force in this shaken capital, establishing highway checkpoints to reinforce security.

Fifty-seven people remained hospitalized with injuries suffered Wednesday in blasts that struck the prime minister’s office and a suburban police station, said Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni, who made his comments to the official APS news agency after visiting hospitals. A total of 222 people were injured in the almost simultaneous bombings.

The heavy security presence was reminiscent of the height of Algeria’s Islamic insurgency in the 1990s, which killed more than 150,000 people.

Western countries reduced embassy services and urged their citizens to avoid traveling on predictable routes in the oil- and gas-rich country.

The bombings lent credence to fears that Al Qaeda’s new affiliate in North Africa is coalescing into a deadly threat to the region.

Algeria’s neighbors also have shown signs of an increase in terrorist activity. Courts in Tunisia, to the east, in recent months convicted at least two dozen suspects on terrorism-related charges. Many of them are said to be linked to the Algeria-based network. In January, at least 14 people were killed in Tunisia in clashes between Islamic extremists and security forces.

In Morocco, to the west, three suspected terrorists blew themselves up and a fourth was shot and killed Tuesday in a police raid in the country’s largest city, Casablanca.

Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said Wednesday that investigators had not established links between the Casablanca and the Algeria violence, but “we don’t rule it out.”

Until recently, Algeria’s peace efforts had seemed successful: Military crackdowns and amnesty offers had reduced militants to a ragtag assembly of fighters in rural hideouts.

Wednesday’s attacks were the deadliest to hit the Algiers region since 2002, when a bomb in a market in a suburb killed 38 people and injured 80.