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Algeria plays down Islamic militant attacks

27 Dec 2006 14:03:13 GMT
Source: Reuters

ALGIERS, Dec 27 (Reuters) - The Algerian government has sought to play down rebel bomb attacks on police stations and foreigners, saying the situation is under control after years of bloody violence.

The United States has urged its citizens in the North African country to be vigilant and review their security after a bus carrying foreign oil workers was bombed on Dec. 10 in the first attack on Western expatriates in many years.

The attack in the heavily protected Bouchaoui neighbourhood, 10 km (6 miles) west of Algiers, killed the Algerian driver and wounded nine people, including four Britons and an American.

It followed a simultaneous truck bomb on two police stations in Algiers on Oct. 30, which killed three people and wounded 24 others.

The attacks "are not the rule and I can tell you the situation is under much better control at the moment", Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni told government-backed newspaper El Moudjahid, in the first reaction by the authorities to the incidents.

"The security situation has greatly improved recently," he added in the remarks published on Wednesday.

Responsibility for the Bouchaoui attack has been claimed by an al Qaeda-linked group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC). The group, which is on a U.S. list of terrorist organisations, wants to set up a purist Islamist state in the Muslim nation.

Over a decade of violence broke out in 1992 when the authorities cancelled a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party was poised to win. They had feared an Iran-style revolution.

Up to 200,000 people were killed, but the violence has tailed off in the past few years.

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Last updated:Wed Dec 27 14:04:59 2006