Bus Bombing

TORONTO - The Algerian branch of al-Qaeda said yesterday it had deliberately targeted Canadians when it bombed a bus full of SNC-Lavalin employees this week, leaving 12 dead and 15 wounded.

In a claim of responsibility issued yesterday, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said it had planned the attack for three months and identified the suicide bomber as Abdul Rahman Abu Zeinab al-Mauritani.

The statement said the attackers "made sure that passengers on the protected bus were Canadian citizens. Therefore, they targeted the bus, and it is not as the apostates claim that we are targeting our brothers, Muslim workers."

It goes on to say that the "number of Canadian people [killed or wounded] is still unknown" and tells Muslims "we are choosing our targets carefully and we are always careful with your blood. We do not target the innocent."

Early on Wednesday, an explosives laden vehicle rammed a bus that was carrying employees of Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin to their jobs at a water treatment plant 90-kilo-metres southeast of the Algerian capital, Algiers.

The dead and injured were all identified as Algerians locally employed by the Canadian company, and the Department of Foreign Affairs also confirmed none of the victims were Canadian citizens.

Gillian MacCormack, vice-president of Global Public Relations for the SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., said yesterday she was aware of the al-Qaeda statement but repeated that the attack had killed 12 employees of Algerian descent.

The al-Qaeda statement, which says the suicide bomber "targeted with his car a bus carrying about 20 Canadians, working in a Canadian company in the area," appears to be an attempt to blunt public criticism that attacks by Islamist terror groups kill far more locals than Westerners.

"It shows that the criticism that they're now getting from various Muslim theologians and ideologues is starting to sting," said Professor Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

"It's obvious that they are becoming sensitive to this issue," said Prof. Hoffman, one of the world's leading terrorism experts and the author of Inside Terrorism.

"Terrorism is always part of intimidation in any event so they're sending a message, 'Don't even work for this Canadian company whether you're Muslim or not.' But they're also trying to cover their back by saying, 'We didn't kill Muslims.'"

The statement claims responsibility for several terrorist attacks in Algeria this month, and says they were revenge for a military operation that killed 12 of their members in Tizi Ouzou province.

AQIM is a North African terrorist group (previously known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat) that is aligned with al-Qaeda and wants to turn Algeria into an Islamist state.

It has carried out a number of attacks in recent months, some of them directed at Western companies, although most of the victims were Algerians.

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