Bomber kills 4 in Algeria
2008-01-29 18:34
Thenia - A suicide bomber drove into a hail of bullets to set off a bomb outside a police station in eastern Algeria that security services said killed four people and injured 20.
A series of attacks blamed on al-Qaeda's offshoot in North Africa has left hundreds dead over the past 12 months.
Three of the dead in Thenia, 50km east of Algiers, where police and security services feared the death toll would rise as several of the injured were in a critical condition, some in a coma.
The blast caused extensive damage around the police station, gutting at least seven buildings. The police station only suffered slight damage however.
Witnesses said police opened fire to stop the small van driven by the suicide bomber from reaching its target.
The van collided with several obstacles, including barriers around the police station, giving police time to take action.
The suicide bomber detonated his explosives when police opened fire.
"It was a miracle we survived," an old woman whose house was destroyed in the blast said.
Hours after the blast hundreds of bystanders were trying to gain access to the scene which had been cordoned off by police.
Thenia is at a major crossroads on the edge of the restive region of Kabylie, where Islamists are holed up in the mountains.
Security forces announced they had smashed an Islamist cell at Corso, near Thenia, on Monday, which was planning a suicide attack in Algiers.
In the past 10 days, several embassies in Algiers have advised their citizens to avoid public places like restaurants, nights clubs, cafes, and to take maximum precautions if they visit the country's interior.
Security forces have reinforced checks on the roads into Algiers and other major cities and stepped up patrols in districts with large Islamist populations.
On January 4 a suicide bomb attack on a police station in Naciria, in the Boumerdes region east of Algiers, killed four police.
On December 11 two suicide blasts killed at least 41 people, including 17 UN staffers, three of them foreign nationals.
The series of attacks started in April last year when bomb attacks on the government headquarters and an Algiers police station left 33 dead and more than 200 wounded.
All of the attacks have been claimed by al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, a group of Islamists who changed their name to al-Qaeda last year after swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden.