World outrage and shock spilled over yesterday as a second straight day of bomb attacks in oil and gas-rich Algeria took the death toll to 54 and injured scores of civilians.
Eleven people died and 31 were wounded in two car bomb attacks yesterday in the eastern Algerian town of Bouira, a day after a massive attack on a police school in the town of Issers, east of Algiers, claimed 43 lives.
China yesterday lambasted the “terrorist action.”
“We firmly oppose terrorism in all forms, and we support the Algerian government’s efforts in combating terrorism and safeguarding national stability,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said in Beijing.
Russia yesterday said it “severely condemned these new and bloody crimes committed by terrorists,” and underscored that it would back Algiers’ efforts to eradicate “underground terrorist organizations.”
Al-Qaeda has claimed previous attacks in Algeria and Morocco.
Tuesday’s strike in Issers was the deadliest attack this year in Algeria and worse than bombings in December last year in Algiers against government and UN buildings, which killed 41 people and injured many others.
Those attacks were claimed by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), an Algeria-based group which last year declared allegiance to al-Qaeda and renamed itself al-Qaeda’s Branch in the Islamic Maghreb.
The recent spate of violence brought to an end a six-month period of relative calm that followed the devastating December bombings.
Yesterday’s first bomb targeted Bouira’s regional military command and injured four soldiers, the state-run APS news agency said. A minute later, 11 people died and 27 were wounded when a second bomb went off next to a hotel in downtown Bouira, APS and the state-run national radio said.
A security official in the Bouira area said that nearly all the victims were civilians.
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