Al-Qaeda’s North African branch claimed to have killed at least 130 people in Algeria in a spate of attacks this month — nearly twice the official death toll, said a statement carried on a Web site frequently used by militants.
The group described the attacks targeting a police academy, a military barracks and a Canadian engineering company this week as its retaliation against security forces for their recent crackdown on militants.
The militant group also denied Algerian government claims that it was targeting the general population, insisting that it only hit security forces, which it accused of being apostates or traitors to Islam.
The bombings “killed more than 130 apostates, wounded more than 100 and destroyed three barracks and several vehicles,” the militant group said in a statement carried late on Friday on a Web site often used by militants.
The statement could not be verified independently, but was also quoted by the US-based SITE group, which monitors extremist messages. In addition, it was similar to a statement issued by an al-Qaeda spokesman on the Arab TV station Al-Jazeera.
Official tallies show that up to 60 people were killed in the attacks carried out in less than 24 hours this week.
On Tuesday, a suicide bomber rammed a car full of explosives into a line of applicants waiting to register at a police academy, killing at least 43 in the town of Les Issers, some 55km east of the capital, Algiers.
At dawn the next day, twin car bombs targeted a military headquarters and a passenger bus in the neighboring town of Bouira, 90km southeast of Algiers. The 12 killed in Bouira were employees of a Canadian engineering company, SNC-Lavalin.
Security and hospital officials say another five people have since died of their injuries from the attacks.
This raises to at least 70 the number of people killed in the six large-scale attacks that took place this month.
Still, the official death toll remains much lower than the figures advanced by al-Qaeda’s statements, which also were based on claims that militants killed many more people than officially acknowledged.
Authorities insist terrorists indiscriminately target the Algerian population and often avoid updating official casualty tolls, especially for slain government forces.
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