Ten U.N. staff among dead in Algeria bombs

By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Ten U.N. staff members are believed to have been among those killed when car bombs hit U.N. and other buildings in Algiers on Tuesday and more U.N. staff were still unaccounted for, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

At least 26 people were killed when suspected al Qaeda militants detonated twin car bombs in Algeria's capital, in one of the bloodiest attacks since civil strife in the 1990s.

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.

"We now believe that the U.N. death toll is at 10," U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. "A number of staff still remain unaccounted for and the situation, as you know, remains fluid."

A U.N. statement said one of the two blasts destroyed the offices of the U.N. Development Program, or UNDP, and severely damaged the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, in the Algerian capital.

The Geneva-based commissioner, Antonio Guterres, said in a BBC television interview he had "no doubt that the U.N. was targeted". He said the blast occurred in a street separating the main U.N. office from UNHCR's compound.

The attack brought back memories of a bomb that destroyed the U.N. office in Baghdad in 2003 and killed 22 people, including mission chief Sergio Vieira de Mello.

DIGGING THROUGH RUBBLE