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WORLD> Africa
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New bomb attacks in Algeria killed 12
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-21 10:27 Several other Algerian newspapers also questioned whether a "national reconciliation" policy voted in 2005 to grant widespread amnesty to Islamists was giving radical groups too much space to regroup and find new support. Algeria's insurgency broke out in 1992 when the secular-leaning army canceled legislative elections that an Islamist party was expected to win, and it claimed up to 200,000 lives. The insurgency largely died out before insurgents got a new boost by joining forces with al-Qaida.
Today, extremists focus their efforts against security forces and foreigners. On Sunday, extremists ambushed and then beheaded 12 people, including 11 security officials in Skikda in eastern Algeria. A soldier and the head of the nearby military region of Jijel were killed on August 14; a suicide bombing four days earlier killed eight people at a police station in Zemmouri next to Algiers. A suicide bombing wounded 25 on August 3. Several newspapers said the GSPC's original founder issued a condemnation of Tuesday's attacks. "Quit all subversive action," Hassan Hattab was quoted as saying, calling the armed insurgency "a dead end." Hattab, who has been dismissed by the more militant members of the GSPC, lives in an undisclosed location. The authenticity of his statement could not be independently verified. |
