By Kevin Kim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

THENIA, Algeria – Islamist armed groups in Algeria is increasingly relying on suicide bombers to deliver its strikes.

On Tuesday, a car bomb exploded outside a police station in northern Algeria, killing at least two people and wounding 23 others. Officers opened fire on a vehicle that was speeding toward the local police station in the town of Thenia. The vehicle exploded before it reached the building, leaving a 6-foot-wide crater. The force of the blast stopped a clock on nearby City Hall and damaged surrounding buildings.

Though no one immediately claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack, authorities believe the bombing was carried out by an Algerian al-Qaida affiliate who was also behind twin suicide bombings that killed 37 people in December. On December 11, two small trucks loaded with explosive materials struck U.N. offices and a government building, killing at least 37 people, 17 of them U.N. workers.

The Algerian al-Qaida affiliate – emerged from an alliance between Osama bin Laden’s international terrorist network and an Algerian Islamist movement known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or GSPC – has been actively calling for insurgency since January 2007. Before the alliance, the number of rebels fighting to set up purist Islamic rule had been falling dramatically after a decade of violence that began in 1992, when the then army-backed government canceled the country’s first multiparty elections to prevent a radical Islamic party from victory. Armed groups in return sought to overthrow the government, and up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing violence.

Violence has fallen since then, but the GSPC’s alliance with al-Qaida last year seems to have rekindled the main armed group’s interest in the revolt and they began to wage larger-scale bombings and target foreigners.

Algerian security forces have recently stated that they have dismantled a rebel gang responsible for the twin bombing of U.N. offices back in December. The forces killed two suspects and arrested another two.

For more information, please see:

The Associated Press – Group behind UN bomb dismantled – 1 February 2008

Reuters – Algeria says smaller rebel cells test terror hunt – 31 January 2008

Boston Herald – Car bomb blast outside Algerian police station kills at least 2 – 29 January 2008

Guardian Unlimited – Car bomb blast in Algeria kills 2 – 29 January 2008