DELLYS, Algeria (AFP) — Algeria was rocked by its second suicide bomb attack in three days on Saturday when a blast ripped through a naval barracks, with an Al-Qaeda offshoot later claiming responsibility for the blast that killed at least 30 people.
The north African branch of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for that attack and Thursday's apparent assassination attempt on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in the eastern city of Batna, Al-Jazeera television reported Sunday citing a statement posted on the Internet from the group.
Most who died in Saturday's blast in the port town of Dellys, 70 kilometres (45 miles) east of Algiers, were members of the coastguard, but the interior ministry said three civilians also died and many of the 47 wounded were also civilians.
On Thursday, 22 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when a man exploded a device in a crowd waiting to meet Bouteflika in Batna.
This time, a van normally used to deliver supplies to the barracks smashed through the rear entrance and penetrated 20 metres (yards) inside the base before exploding, according to witnesses.
Initial reports indicated the attackers hijacked the vehicle before packing it full of explosives.
The huge explosion flattened most of the prefabricated buildings that make up the barracks.
Wood, metal and concrete debris, clothing and suitcases were strewn around the port as a fleet of ambulances with sirens wailing picked up the wounded and helicopters buzzed overhead.
Dellys was sealed off and a security cordon thrown around the port as anti-terrorist police sifted through the rubble.
The UN Security Council, former colonial power France, Spain and the European Union all condemned the bombing.
France's new UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, who chairs the 15-member council this month, noted that council members on Friday issued a statement condemning "all terrorist acts."
"This condemnation must obviously be reiterated with strength, after the new heinous terrorist attack committed today in Dellys," he added in a statement.
Al-Jazeera did not provide any additional details on the statement from the Al-Qaeda Movement in the Islamic Countries of the Maghreb, and it was not immediately possible to obtain a copy.
Islamic militants from Al-Qaeda's self-styled offshoot in north Africa have claimed credit for other recent bombings.
The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) has pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and renamed itself the Al-Qaeda Movement in the Maghreb, sparking Western fears of Islamist militants gaining a toehold in north Africa from which to launch attacks in Europe and beyond.
Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said: "Those who carried out these attacks have failed for the past 17 years in their hopeless attempt to shake the stability of this country, and they will never succeed," Belkhadem said.
Bouteflika went on television after Thursday's attacks to denounce the "criminals" responsible but vowed to pursue his national reconciliation policy.
This initiative is intended to integrate Islamic activists who renounce violence that has rocked the country since the army intervened in 1992 to cancel elections a fundamentalist party was poised to win.
A civil war in the 1990s claimed more than 150,000 lives.
About 2,000 militants have been freed from prison and the authorities say about 300 have given themselves up, earning a presidential pardon.
But in April, car bomb attacks on the government headquarters and a police station in Algiers killed 33 people and injured more than 220.
Three months later, 10 soldiers were killed and 35 people wounded when a suicide bomber rammed a truck full of explosives into barracks at Lakhdaria, 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Algiers.
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