Posted on 06/29/2002 4:07:59 PM PDT by knighthawk
ALGIERS (AP) — Suspected Islamic extremists attacked a bus on the outskirts of the Algerian capital, killing 13 people aboard and injuring nine, the official APS news agency reported today.
The Friday night attack came 24 hours after two people were shot to death and three injured in another bus attack, near the coastal town of Bou Ismael, west of Algiers.
In the latest assault, five or six men attacked the bus with machine-gun fire in the town of Eucalyptus, 20 kilometres south of Algiers, the news agency said without providing details.
Eucalyptus, a small dusty town, is in an area known as the ``triangle of death" because of the numerous attacks there in the early years of a 10-year-old Islamic insurgency that has left an estimated 120,000 people dead.
The area, and the Mitidja Plain to the south, were long controlled by the radical Armed Islamic Group, blamed for large-scale massacres in the region. Security forces were thought to have largely cleaned up the area over the past two years.
The Friday night attack was the third deadly assault on a bus in the past three weeks, and there was speculation that it might signal a new strategy by the Armed Islamic Group's new leader, Rachid Abou Tourab, trying to mark the group's ability to continue killings.
On Thursday, two young men armed with automatic pistols boarded a bus at a stop near Bou Ismael, some 50 kilometres west of Algiers, killing the driver at point blank range and firing on the passengers, killing one and injuring three, according to press reports.
Eleven people were killed in an attack June 11 on a bus in Medea, south of Algiers at the foot of the Mitidja Plain.
Buses are widely used by Algerians in the hot summer months to head to the beaches, but mixed swimming is condemned by the extremists.
Abou Tourab replaced Antar Zouabri, killed in February in an attack by security forces on his hideout in nearby Boufarik.
The insurgency erupted after the army cancelled 1992 legislative elections that a Muslim fundamentalist party was poised to win.
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