ALGIERS – More blood in Algeria. After yesterday’s attack in Kabylie , this time it was the city of Bouira, 150 kilometers south-east of the capital, where two car bombs this morning caused 11 deaths and 31 wounded.

The explosion of the first bomb destroyed a military building. The second was caused by a suicide bomber who, driving a car, hurled himself against a bus of a Canadian company, the SNC Lavalin, near the Sophie hotel. No foreign worker was on the bus at the time of the explosion.

The attacks that have bloodied Algeria in the last two days have not yet been claimed, but there is a strong suspicion that they were carried out by Al Qaeda. The city of Bouira, with Algiers, Tizi Ouzou and Boumerdes, is in fact part of a quadrilateral of death, where in the past they hit groups affiliated to the network of Osama Bin Laden. The Algerian Minister of the Interior, Yazid Zerhouni, after yesterday’s attack, reiterated that “the government will fight terrorism with strong determination to completely eliminate it. These criminal episodes will not make us abandon the road of reconciliation chosen by the country”.

August 20 2008