Death toll from Algeria violence reaches year high
30 Apr 2007 13:32:37 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds analyst comment paras 3-6) ALGIERS, April 30 (Reuters) - The death toll from political violence in Algeria jumped to a year high in April, when suicide bombings killed 33 people in the capital Algiers, according to a Reuters count based on newspapers reports. An estimated 81 people were killed in the past month including 28 Islamist rebels, compared with a total of 45 killed in March, 18 in February and 21 in January. Security analysts link the rise in violence to al Qaeda, following January's announcement by Algeria's main Islamist militant group, the GSPC, that it was renaming itself al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Anne Giudicelli of French-based consultancy Terrorisc said the move, blessed by al Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahri, had signalled a new phase in activity and both the militants and the government had stepped up their operations. "We are seeing a logic of escalation," she said, with the militants seeking bigger attacks even as government forces intensified an offensive against their strongholds in the Kabylie region east of Algiers. Apart from the name change, she said, the GSPC's integration with al Qaeda had enabled it to call on new operatives not previously known to the security services. The group claimed responsibility for the April 11 Algiers bombings, the first in the centre of the Mediterranean port city in more than a decade. The blasts were believed to be the country's first suicide bomb attacks. One ripped off part of the facade of the prime minister's headquarters, while two others hit a police station and a neighbouring gendarmerie office in the eastern outskirts of the capital. Founded in 1998, the GSPC began as an offshoot of another armed group that was waging an armed revolt against the government to establish an Islamic state. The GSPC shared the overall aims of that revolt, which began in 1992 after the then military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party was set to win. Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed. The violence has subsided sharply since the 1990s but the remaining rebels in recent months have stepped up bomb attacks on security forces and on foreign targets. Last week Algerian state news agency APS said the army had shot dead the second-in-command of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Samir Moussaab. The group denied in a Web posting that he was one of their leaders.
