The blasts came a day after a suicide bombing in a neighboring region killed 43.

The new bombings were the sixth major extremist action this month in the North African nation.

No group has claimed responsibility for the spate of killings, including the two remote-controlled car bombs that struck Bouira yesterday. But all six occurred in an area east of the capital where extremists from an Algerian offshoot of al-Qaeda are suspected to operate.

Violence in this gas- and oil-rich U.S. ally has surged since the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, or GSPC - a homegrown extremist group that led a deadly insurgency in the 1990s - joined Osama bin Laden's network in 2006 and took the name Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa.

The death toll surged to more than 70 this month alone, and the bombings led many newspapers to question whether authorities have grown too lenient, or too weak, to fight Islamist extremists.

Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a terrorism expert, says the group is receiving military reinforcements from al-Qaeda in Iraq - and using Algeria as a platform to spread instability throughout North Africa.

"The security situation is deteriorating, and it's worrisome for Europe," he said.

Interior Minister Yazid Zehrouni insisted the string of attacks suggested that extremist groups were "cornered" by security services and "riddled with internal problems and are mainly aiming to raise internal troop morale."

Yesterday's two car bombs in Bouira, 55 miles southeast of the capital, were triggered by remote control, the first hitting a regional military command and injuring four soldiers, the state-run APS news agency reported.

A minute later, at least 12 people died and 27 were wounded when a second bomb exploded next to a nearby downtown hotel. Most of the victims were traveling in a bus that passed in front of the hotel, APS said.

All those who died and about 15 of the wounded were Algerian employees of SNC Lavalin, a Montreal-based engineering and construction firm, the company said in a statement. They were on the bus headed to work on a water-treatment plant and distribution project.

The military barracks were severely damaged. "Parts of the walls have fallen off, the fence is destroyed, cars are buried under the rubble," Abdellah Debbache, the Bouira correspondent of Algeria's Liberte newspaper, told the AP by telephone.

On Tuesday, a suicide bombing 30 miles away in Les Issers killed 43 people in Algeria's deadliest attack since the 1990s. The bomber targeted young students lined up to apply at a police academy, and at least 45 were injured.

Several newspapers questioned whether a "national reconciliation" policy voted in 2005 to grant widespread amnesty to Islamists was giving radical groups too much space to regroup.

Algeria's insurgency broke out in 1992 when the secular-leaning army canceled legislative elections that an Islamist party was expected to win. It claimed up to 200,000 lives. The insurgency largely died out before extremists got a new boost by joining forces with al-Qaeda.



By Alfred de Montesquiou
From philly.com/philly