Refugee chief says U.N. target of Algiers blast

LONDON (Reuters) - The United Nations was clearly the target of one of two bombs that killed 67 people in the Algerian capital on Tuesday, its refugee chief said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told BBC World television: "I have no doubt that the U.N. was targeted."

He added in an interview: "It is an outrage. This is something that doesn't make sense at all."

Guterres said the bombing of the U.N.'s offices in Algiers reflected the desire of "some extremist people" to kill, create terror and prevent the international community from supporting humanitarian causes and human rights.

He did not say how many U.N. staff had been killed or wounded.

Algeria's Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said the bombs were set off by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), using the former name of al Qaeda's north African wing.

Al Qaeda has in the past accused the United Nations of inflicting injustice upon Muslims, including by passing the 1947 partition resolution on Palestine that paved the way for Israel's creation.

"The United Nations is nothing but a tool of crime," Osama bin Laden said in a statement in November 2001. "We are being massacred every day, while the United Nations continues to sit idly by."

(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Keith Weir)