Tuareg rebels of the Niger Justice Movement (MNJ) announced Aug. 18 they are laying down arms following peace talks brokered by Libya. The announcement was made by the MNJ leader Aghaly ag Alambo, following a meeting across the Libyan border with the country's leader, Moammar Qadaffi. Alambo said he was also speaking for Tuareg rebels in neighboring Mali, who would disarm too. Ibrahim Ag Bahanga's Malian Tuareg rebels meanwhile handed over 21 captives to authorities Aug. 17 in what he called a gesture of "good faith." The released soldiers join five others turned over to the government since the end of the peace talks in Algeria on July 21. (FOCUS, BBC, Aug. 19; VOA, Aug. 18)

A suicide car bomb attack on security forces killed eight civilians and injured 19 at Zemmouri, Boumerdes province, 30 miles east of Algiers, Aug. 9. The checkpoint blast outside a barracks targeted troops of the Coast Guard and National Gendarmerie. Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said the attack appeared to have been in retaliation for an army ambush that killed 12 rebels late last week. The ambush was said to be part of the army's pursuit of rebels behind a car bombing in Tizi Ouzou on Aug. 3 that wounded 25 people. (Reuters, Algeria Watch, Aug. 11) Three Gendarmes were also injured when a remote-controlled bomb targeted a patrol near Tassalast beach in Tizi Ouzou province Aug. 9. Two other bombs were dismantled by security services on Aug. 10 in the area of Tigzirt in Tizi Ouzou. (Magharebia, Aug. 12)

A suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up and injured 13 Algerian troops in an attack on an army convoy in Lakhdaria July 23. On June 8 a French engineer and his Algerian driver were killed in a bomb attack in the same area that was claimed by the North African wing of al-Qaeda network. (AFP, July 24) At the village of Beni Djemaa, Blida wilaya, jihadist insurgents ransacked a farmhouse and beheaded its 66-year-old owner, after demanding money the family had received under an agricultural aid program. (Magharebia, July 23)

Libyan leader Moammar Qadaffi made a big show of boycotting the Mediterranean Union summit in Paris, bashing the new initiative as a "neo-colonial" project to weaken African and Arab unity. (RFE/RL, July 14) But days earlier, France and Libya signed a nuclear cooperation agreement, with Paris pledging to aid Tripoli in the development of "peaceful" nuclear energy and uranium exploration. Over the past year, Over the past year, France has signed similar agreements with Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. (World Nuclear News, July 11)

The New York Times scored a media coup July 1 with a front-page story on the revival Algeria's Islamist militant underground following its transformation into an al-Qaeda franchise, "Ragtag Insurgency Gains a Lifeline From Al Qaeda." The front-page story featured an interview (carried out by an intermediary using a tape recorder) with Abdelmalek Droukdal, who in 2004 "sent a secret message" to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," resulting in "what one firsthand observer describes as a corporate merger." The fruit of this union was "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb," which has since been wracking up high-profile attacks in Algeria. But many in Algeria are furious at the Times now, deeming the account free advertising for the terror franchise.

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."

The New York Times deigns to cover the conflict in Western Sahara (which the paper calls "nearly forgotten"—true enough, thanks in large part to the "newspaper of record") June 4—on the occasion of a Washington press affair featuring former residents of the Polisario Front's refugee camps in Algeria, who complained bitterly of authoritarianism and corruption by the camp's administrators. Dissidents are persecuted and international aid shunted to the black market by Polisario commissars, they said. The refugees, now receiving Moroccan aid in occupied Western Sahara, were generally circumspect about what political future they supported for the territory—but one openly said "We would like the Western Sahara to remain part of Morocco, of course." Only towards the end of the piece are we told the press affair was organized by the Moroccan American Center for Policy—loaning credence to Polisario Washington representative Mouloud Said's gripe to the Times: "These people are brought by the Moroccan public relations companies here, so they have to mislead."

A group of tribal elders sent by Libya has offered to serve as mediators in resolving the Tuareg rebellion in Niger. In a meeting with Niger's President Mamadou Tandja on Wednesday, the association of elders expressed its "will to contribute to peace" in the north of the country, a source told AFP.