Two dead in simultaneous Algeria bombings

Algiers, Oct 30: Two people were killed and 17 wounded when Algerian Islamist rebels set off explosives-laden vehicles outside two police stations east of Algiers in their most elaborate attack in years, witnesses said today.

The simultaneous overnight blasts in the town of Reghaia 30 km east of the capital Algiers and the eastern Algiers suburb of Dergana were the first against police stations in Africa's second largest country for more than five years.

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

Few details were immediately available about the blast in Dergana as police had cordoned off the scene.

One resident who lives in an apartment five km away said that when the blast went off at about midnight (0430IST) he heard a big blast. ''The windows shook,'' he said.

But a security source said the damage was minor in Dergana and that most if not all the casualties had occurred in Reghaia.

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

Residents said the Reghaia attack began when gunmen firing automatic weapons hurled a grenade at the entrance to the building at about midnight.

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.

A security source said the vehicle appeared to have been a garbage truck stuffed with 60 kg of explosives. The vehicle used in the Dergana attack was probably a car, he said.

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 are estimated to have been killed in the ensuing bloodshed. The violence has sharply subsided in the past few years.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has vowed to crush militants refusing to surrender after a six-month amnesty expired on August 31. The FIS remains banned and a state of emergency first imposed in 1992 is still in force.

Reghaia lies in a region where dozens of fighters of the country's main rebel group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), are hiding out.

The GSPC, which refused to take part in the amnesty, is estimated to consist of up to 800 fighters.

REUTERS