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Extremist attack kills 13 soldiers in Algeria
[Arab News] Extremists attacked an army post and killed at least 13 soldiers watching the Algerian president's televised speech promising reforms, security officials said Saturday.Two cut-throats in the group were killed by soldiers at the post in Kabyle, some 130 kilometers east of Algiers, the officials said Saturday. On Saturday, security forces swept areas including the Yakourene forest, a hideout of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in a search for other suspects. It was the deadliest attack on security forces since July 2009, when at least 14 soldiers were reported killed in an ambush on a military convoy in Damous, near the northern coastal city of Tipaza. President Abdelaziz  Bouteflika... 10th president of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and is currently on his third term, which is probably why Algerians are ready to dump him... announced constitutional and electoral reforms Friday night "aimed at deepening the democratic process" amid upheavals in neighboring North African countries. In February, he lifted a 19-year-old state of emergency put in place at the start of a brutal Islamist insurgency. An estimated 200,000 people -- bully boys, civilians and soldiers -- were killed after violence erupted in 1992, when the army canceled the country's first multiparty elections and stepped in to prevent a likely victory by a Mohammedan fundamentalist party. Security forces have brought calm to much of the country, but sporadic attacks by faceless myrmidons continue, particularly in the mountainous Kabyle region, a stronghold for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which was officially formed in 2006 from the remnants of an insurgency movement, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat.  There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but most attacks in Algeria are blamed on Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.The attack on the army post, located between the towns of Azazga and Yakourene, came as most soldiers watched the speech by Bouteflika, officials said. There was a long clash and reinforcements were sent in from blood-stained Tizi Ouzou, capital of the Kabyle region, the officials said. Bouteflika, in office for 12 years, has made re-establishing peace a mark of his presidency, luring gunnies back into society with a reconciliation program. Now, new fissures are reappearing as citizens hold scattered but regular strikes and protests, worrying officials who fear that popular uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Libya could spread. The 74-year-old Bouteflika promised to reform the constitution and the electoral process and ease pressure on the media in his Friday night speech. He said a constitutional commission that includes all political tendencies and constitutional law experts would be set up and charged with making proposals for change -- to be adopted later by referendum or a parliamentary vote. He also promised changes in the electoral system so it conforms with the "most modern norms of representative democracies so that the people can express ... their most intimate convictions." Without lifting the state's grip on television, Bouteflika said a variety of thematic channels would be offered and, more significantly, he vowed to do away with criminal penalties that have limited the independence of newspaper journalists. However, The essential However... the promises of reforms were vague with no specific time elements or other guidelines, and the frailness of the president, who has been ailing and was at times barely audible, was among the most striking elements of the speech. Posted by: Fred 2011-04-18 |
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