Via BBC/AFP

Evan Kohlmann reports:

The Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC)–now known as “Al-Qaida’s Committee in the Islamic Maghreb”–has issued a statement today claiming responsibility for dramatic suicide bombings in the capital of Algeria, and allegedly likewise in neighboring Morocco.

23 dead, 2 bombings.

Walid Phares gives the bottom line: “It is about a global Jihadi campaign with Algeria and other countries as “battlefields.”

Watch Erik Stakelbeck’s interview with Phares in case you missed it here.

Marisol at Jihad Watch has more on the attacks.

London Times reports on the end of “reconciliation:”

The scenes in Algiers were grimly reminiscent of the terrorist war that cost up to 200,000 lives between 1992 and 1998. That came after the first multiparty elections since the country gained independence from France in 1962. The army moved in to halt the poll when it became clear that an Islamic party was on the way to victory and the military quelled terrorist activity ruthlessly.

The bombings yesterday appeared to signal an end to the policy of national reconciliation championed by President Bouteflika.

As dozens of ambulances headed towards the bomb sites and fire officers struggled to contain the ensuing blazes, survivors, many bleeding, were led to safety through a pall of thick black smoke. Passers-by looked on in despair. Leila Aissaoui, 25, was in tears as she said: “I thought explosions in Algiers were over. I made a big mistake and I can’t accept this.”

Tahar bin Taleb, a lawyer, said: “My wife called me. I ran home to find all the mirrors and windows in the house were shattered.” The attacks were denounced as criminal and cowardly by Mr Belkhadem.

Security experts cautioned of a fresh outbreak of violence when, on September 11 last year, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda second-in-command, announced a formal merger with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), one of the most violent organisations to emerge from the bloody civil war in Algeria. The announcement came within days of the expiry of the Government’s six-month amnesty for militants and sparked an up-surge in terrorist activity by the GSPC. The union was further cemented in January, when the GSPC declared that it would be known as the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb.

The targets for the resurgent group’s bombers in Algiers yesterday appeared to adhere to the GSPC’s domestic agenda of attacking police and government buildings. But other recent attacks have been directed at the oil and gas industries, which employ foreign workers and export energy to the West.

For the convert -or-die jihadists, there is never “reconciliation.”

It’s submission or resistance.

Choose one.

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