Police Candidates; Officials suspect al-Qaeda faction behind carnage

ISSERS, ALGERIA - A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside a top police school in Algeria yesterday, killing 43 people and raising fears of an al-Qaeda-linked campaign in North Africa.

The attacker drove a car packed with explosives at the main entrance to the school as young men, mostly university graduates, waited to write an entry exam for the paramilitary police force.

Al-Qaeda has claimed previous attacks in Algeria and neighbouring Morocco, but officials gave no indication who was behind the strike in Issers, 60 kilometres east of the capital Algiers and near the mountain stronghold of the self-styled al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The Interior Ministry said the dead included 42 civilians and one police official; 32 of the 45 wounded were also civilians.

Many young Algerians see military jobs as the ticket to a better future amid fierce competition for their hearts and minds between the military and radical Islamists, analysts say.

"It's utter carnage," said the weeping father of one of those killed in the attack.

"It's a catastrophe. May God punish them for the crime they have committed against these youngsters and their country."

Another candidate survived because he went to buy cigarettes, but his father, mother and brother were killed.

The blast destroyed several houses, blew out windows in stores and uprooted trees. It also left a crater several metres wide.

Emergency workers gathered the remains of the dead, wrapping them in blankets and placing them in waiting ambulances.

It was the deadliest attack this year in Algeria and worse than the December, 2007, bombings of government and United Nations buildings in Algiers, in which 41 people died and many others were injured.

No group immediately claimed responsibility. This was in contrast to the December attacks, which were acknowledged by the Salafist Group for Preaching & Combat (GSPC), an Algeria-based group that declared allegiance to al-Qaeda last year and took the name al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

"This is an act against Algerians," said Yazid Zerhouni, the Interior Minister, who visited the blast site with top security officials.

"These terrorist gangs are seeking through attacks against civilians to loosen the net closing around them as the security forces drive them to the wall."

But Mahmoud Belhimer, a political analyst, said, "We should not play down the terrorist menace as the authorities are doing.... Tuesday's attack showed that they are well-entrenched on the ground and seem to be able to hit significant targets."

A few hours after yesterday's attack, Hassan Hattab, GSPC's founder and its former head, called on the Islamists and those tempted to join them "to give up the armed fight and lay down their weapons."

Mr. Hattab, who claimed to have given up the armed struggle in September, 2003, was arrested by the Algerian authorities four years later and is awaiting trial.

Conflict began in Algeria in 1992 when a military-backed government scrapped elections a radical Islamic party was poised to win. About 150,000 people have died in the ensuing violence.

The bloodshed has eased in recent years, but a hard core of several hundred rebels fight on as part of al-Qaeda's affiliate.

Its leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel, told The New York Times last month increasing numbers of young men across the region were joining, frustrated with persistent poverty and angry at what he called the West's war on Islam.

In recent months, the group has been accused of opening terrorist training camps deep in the Sahara, kidnapping tourists and recruiting Islamist fighters from as far away as Senegal and Niger.

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