Suspected Qaeda bombs kill at least 26 in Algiers

By Lamine Chikhi

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Suspected al Qaeda militants detonated twin car bombs in Algeria's capital on Tuesday, killing at least 26 people and destroying U.N. offices in one of the bloodiest attacks since civil strife in the 1990s.

Al Qaeda's North African wing said in a statement on an Islamist Internet site that two of its members carried out the bombings in the North African oil and gas exporting country.

The group posted pictures of what it said were the two suicide bombers holding assault rifles. No independent verification of the statement was immediately available.

An official tally put the death toll at 26, while a Health Ministry source said 67 people were killed. Algeria's state radio, monitored by the BBC in London, said the dead included three Asian nationals, a Dane and one Senegalese.

Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem said the government had no reason to hide casualties and that it was immoral for international media to "bid up" the death toll.

The United Nations said at least five of its employees were feared to have been killed when one blast destroyed the offices of the U.N. Development Program and badly damaged the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

"I have no doubt that the U.N. was targeted," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, told BBC television. The United Nations has a low profile in Algeria.

Algerian state television reported six people were pulled from the wreckage of the U.N. offices during the evening and that rescuers were still searching for other possible survivors.