NYT Wonders Who Bombed 43 In Algiers

From those tireless defender of the faith at the New York Times:

Algerian Bombing Kills 43

August 20, 2008
By CAROLINE BROTHERS

PARIS — At least 43 people, mainly civilians and police recruits, were killed and 38 others were wounded Tuesday when a suicide bomber drove a car filled with explosives into a police academy about 35 miles east of the Algerian capital, Algiers, Algerian government officials said.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the death toll was a “preliminary estimate” for the attack early Tuesday in the Les Issers district of Boumerdès, The Associated Press reported.

“There was an explosion at 7 a.m. this morning,” said an official contacted at the office of the Algerian president who declined to be identified but who confirmed the details of the Interior Ministry statement.

“What is certain is that it was an attack aimed at hitting a large number of people — they were above all civilians and a number of recruits,” the official said.

Last December, Algiers was rocked by twin car bombs near United Nations offices and an Algerian government building in an attack that killed more than 30 people. Until Tuesday’s bombing, that was the deadliest attack here in more than a decade.

Those bombings had come after a string of suicide attacks throughout last year, including an attack in April in which two cars exploded, killing more than 30 and wounding 200, and a suicide attack in a crowd awaiting the appearance of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika that killed 22 people but not the president.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, North Africa’s most active terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the earlier attacks, but there appeared to be no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing on Tuesday.

The Algerian government has struggled — with limited success — to convince the outside world that its crackdown against terrorists was working and that the threat from terrorism inside Algeria had diminished.

This is the article from the New York Times in toto.

Note how, as is more and more typical in these kind of stories, there is no attribution of responsibility.

There is only the hint in the penultimate paragraph, which mentions that Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for an earlier attack.

This is more than the Algerian government struggling to convince the world it has no problem with terrorism.

This is the New York Times struggling to convince the world it has no problem with terrorism.

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