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'No risk of civil war in Algeria'
12/12/2007 13:15 - (SA)
Paris - There is no risk of a new civil war in Algeria, Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told French radio on Wednesday, despite the latest in a string of deadly attacks claimed by al-Qaeda militants.
"The situation today is that Algerians are completely united against terrorism," Medelci told French radio Europe 1 when asked to assess the risk. "This cannot be a situation of civil war."
Algeria was rocked by a bloody decade-long Islamist insurgency, after the army intervened in 1992 to cancel elections that Islamic fundamentalists were poised to win.
A string of extremist attacks - culminating with a double car-bombing on Tuesday in Algiers - had killed more than 120 people this year, raising fears the country could plunge back into a new cycle of bloodshed.
72 people killed
The attacks had been claimed by al-Qaeda's Branch in the Islamic Maghreb (BAQMI), created when the last remaining group in Algeria's Islamist insurgency, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda last year.
Asked about the danger of a wave of Islamist attacks spreading across north Africa, Medelci replied: "It's everyone who is targeted, sooner or later."
He said: "This is an evil that can be eradicated, but we cannot do it alone." He also denounced the "manipulators who use false ideas, but also drugs to recruit suicide bombers".
Algeria's Al-Watan newspaper reported on Wednesday that 72 people had been killed in Tuesday's twin car bombs, one at the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the other outside the Supreme Court.
Medelci said in the interview that 30 people including five foreigners were killed.
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