Algeria truck bombs kill three, show rebel defiance

ALGIERS, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Three people were killed and 24 wounded in near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on two Algerian police stations, police said today, in what witnesses called the most elaborate assault by Islamist rebels in several years.

The apparently coordinated overnight blasts in Reghaia town 30 km (20 miles) east of the capital and the eastern Algiers suburb of Dergana were the first bombings of police stations in Africa's second largest country for more than five years.

Police said the three dead, a woman and two men, were all civilians. A police statement said a stolen vehicle was used in each attack. The Reghaia attack took place at 2355 (2255 gmt), that at Dergana 10 minutes later, the statement said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but experts, residents and security sources blamed the main rebel group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which has consistently refused peace overtures from the government and announced in September it had joined al Qaeda.

The Reghaia blast burned parts of the two-storey building, gouged a hole in the street one metre (three feet) deep, shattered windows for several blocks and hurled truck parts 100 metres from the scene. Eighteen cars were burned out.

In Dergana, the twisted hulk of the truck bomb lay beside the police station, itself less badly damaged than a nearby private home whose front walls had partially collapsed.

CHILDREN ''IN SHOCK'' ''I thought it was bombardment (by artillery). My children were sleeping when they heard the noise. They are still in shock,'' one resident said.

Sporadic clashes between Islamist guerrillas and security forces normally take place in isolated rural areas of the oil- and gas-exporting Mediterranean country of 33 million.

Long in decline, the GSPC still poses a threat east of Algiers and in the Saharan desert south thanks to criminal and family links and the use of remote terrain that effectively restrict sources of intelligence for the army, experts say.

Residents in Reghaia and Dergana said both attacks involved two teams and followed the same pattern: in both incidents the attacks began when gunmen fired automatic weapons at the entrance to the building.

At the same time, accomplices parked a truck rigged with explosives at the side of the building and then made their getaway in a car before setting off the bomb, apparently using a remote-controlled device, the residents said.

In the case of Reghaia, the gunmen staging the first phase of the assault also hurled a grenade at the police station.

Islamists began an armed revolt in 1992 after the then military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was set to win.

Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed.

The violence has sharply subsided in the past few years.

Lies Boukraa, an expert on the insurgency, told Reuters the twin bombings showed the GSPC had succeeded in implementing a strategy to keep pressure on the government despite being attacked and harried constantly by the security forces.

''The shattering of the armed groups into micro-groups (under pressure from the army) has deprived the security services of information,'' he said. ''I predict an intensification of terrorist attacks in the short term.'' REUTERS PDM VC2120