A suicide attack Tuesday on a police school killed 43 people and wounded 38, authorities said as Algeria reeled from its worst militant assault this year. An Al-Qaeda group has claimed previous suicide attacks in Algeria but officials gave no indication who was behind the attack on candidates waiting to take an examination at paramilitary gendarmerie training school in Issers, 55 km east of the capital. The Interior Ministry said that the casualty toll was still provisional. But it is already the deadliest attack this year in Algeria and worse than the December 2007 attacks in Algiers against government and United Nations buildings, which killed 41 people and injured many others. Witnesses said the attacker drove a car packed with explosives at the main entrance to the school as university graduates waited outside to start an entry exam in the hope of joining the paramilitary gendarmerie. “It's utter carnage,” said the elderly father of one of those killed in the attack. “It's a catastrophe,” he said, weeping. As well as devastating the entrance to the school, the blast destroyed several nearby houses, blew out windows in nearby shops and tore up trees. Civilians and police were among the victims. Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni, told reporters at the scene: “This is an act against Algerians.” The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), in a statement of condemnation, called “for a determined response” to bring the perpetrators to justice. The French EU presidency condemned the attack and expressed support for Algeria's “fight against terrorism.” It added: “Once again, the Algerian people are victims of indiscriminate and barbaric terrorist attacks.” A statement from the Spanish foreign ministry also condemned the attack. The bombing was the latest in a series on security forces in recent weeks. On Sunday, Islamist extremists killed 11 members of the security forces and a civilian in an ambush in the east of the country. That attack, in the Skikda region, also left about a dozen security officers wounded, the Quotidien d'Oran and Liberte newspapers said. Four Islamist militants were killed. Last Thursday, the military commander in the mountainous Jijel region, Abdelkader Yamani, was killed with his driver when a bomb blew up under their four-wheel-drive vehicle. On August 10, a suicide bomber rammed a van full of explosives into a police post at the beach resort of Zemmouri el-Bahri, in eastern Algeria, killing six people and injuring 19 others. A week earlier, on August 3, another suicide attack on a police post at Tizi Ouzou, in the eastern Kabylie region wounded 25 people. Responsibility for that attack was claimed by Al-Qaeda's north African branch. These and other attacks ended a six-month period of relative calm that followed the devastating December bombings in Algiers and a subsequent security clampdown. Hassan Hattab, the founder of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), on Tuesday called on Al-Qaeda-linked militants to lay down their arms. “I advise you to reconsider and refrain from what you are doing and return to the arms of your society and your families,” Hattab was quoted as saying in an appeal to the rebels.
