Algeria arrests eight bombing suspects - paper

ALGIERS, Feb 26 (Reuters) Algerian police arrested eight people suspected of involvement in seven deadly bomb attacks which a branch of al Qaeda claimed responsibility for, a government-backed newspaper said today.

Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), claimed responsibility for the bombings, which took place almost simultaneously on February 13 in two neighbouring provinces east of the capital Algiers.

Six people were killed in the attacks. It came a few weeks after a bomb on a bus carrying foreign oil workers near Algiers killed two people and wounded eight.

The arrested people were taken into custody on Saturday on charges of ''membership of a terrorist group, participation in making explosive devices, assassination and attempted assassination'', among other charges, daily El Moudjahid said, citing local security officials.

The detained people were members of a rebel support network operating in the provinces of Tizi Ouzou and Boumerdes, the newspaper added.

The GSPC said it adopted the Al Qaeda name last month after Osama bin Laden approved the name change.

Police dismantled another network believed to be supplying weapons to the GSPC and involving French, Tunisian and Algerian nationals in the eastern province in Constantine, newspaper Liberte said on Saturday, citing unnamed sources.

Violence in Algeria broke out 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 subsided sharply in recent years.

REUTERS PB VC1655