Two bombs exploded June 8 at the Beni Amrane rail station in Boumerdès wilaya, just east of Algiers, killing 12, including fire-fighters, soldiers, an engineer from the French water engineering company Razel, and his Algerian driver. A third bomb was successfully disarmed, authorities said. There has been no claim of responsibility for the attacks, but this is the second time Razel has been targeted. Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the first blast last September, when three Razel employees, a driver and five police escorts were injured when a bomb targeted their vehicle in the Koudiet Asaserdoune area of Lakhdaria. Responding to the new bombings, French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika his "unwavering support in the determined struggle against terrorism."
Two people died June 4 when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a military barracks in Bordj El Kiffan, 25 kilometers east of Algiers—moments after a remotely-detonated explosion at a nearby café created a distraction. The next day, a roadside bomb killed six soldiers in Cap Djinet, near Dellys in the Boumerdès wilaya. The bombings come on the eve of the Algeria International Exhibition, in which many European countries and the US are slated to participate. (Magharebia [2], June 9)
See our last posts on Algeria [3], France [4], France in Africa [5], al-Qaeda [6] and the Maghreb [6].
