The United Nations has confirmed 10 of its staff died in a double car bombing in the Algerian capital, Algiers, which officially killed at least 26 people. Medics believe as many as 62 people died at UN offices and government buildings when the devices went off on Tuesday morning. As rescuers dug through the rubble, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called them "an abjectly cowardly strike".
A group allied to al-Qaeda claimed the attacks on an Islamist website. Algerian television has reported that six people were pulled alive from the ruins of the UN offices. "We now believe that the UN death toll is at 10," said UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe, adding that "a number of staff" were still missing.
The blasts, which the government said injured at least 177 people, were the latest in a series of attacks in Algeria this year. UN offices in the Hydra district were hit around 0930 (0830 GMT). At around the same time, a blast outside Algeria's Constitutional Council in the Ben Aknoun district hit a bus packed with students. In an unverified online statement, a group calling itself al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb said two vehicles packed with 800kg (1,700lb) of explosives each were used in the blasts. The group said it had targeted "the headquarters of the international infidels' den" and the supreme court to honour one of its senior militants, who died fighting Algerian troops. It called on Western leaders to heed the demands of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
The chief spokesman for the UN refugee agency, Ron Redmond, said it was beyond him why "someone would attack the UN, which is basically a peace-building organisation". |