PM Ouyahia reaffirms Algerian state's will to stamp out terrorism
Prime minister Ahmed Ouyahia reaffirmed on Sunday the Algerian state’s adamant will to eradicate terrorism, a day after a suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden vehicle into a Gendarmerie station in the southern city of Tamanrasset.
- The fight against terrorism “will be pursued until it is totally eradicated,” Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia told the press outside the opening of the spring session of the National Popular Assembly in Algiers.
- Twenty-three people were injured in Saturday’s blast in Tamanrasset, 1,800 kilometers south of Algiers, in what was the first terrorist attack of its type in that part of the country.
- It wounded 15 Gendarmerie officers, five civil protection agents and three passers-by, the defense ministry said.
- Tamanrasset is the hub of a joint task force operated by Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Niger to coordinate the fight against a number of armed terrorist groups including the so-called “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb”.
- Abdelaziz Ziari, president of the national popular assembly, called on Algerians to mobilize against “those who want to undermine their country” and Senate president Abdelkader Bensalah called the attack “cowardly”.
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Concerning next May’s legislative elections, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia hit out against those political parties which indulge in what he called “propaganda”, in reply to accusations by certain parties including the Workers’ Party (PT), AHD 54, MSP and RPR about the introduction of 33.000 new voters from the National Popular Army into the electoral list which was validated on February 21st 2012 by the administrative election commission of the province of Tindouf in south-western Algeria.
- “Such electioneering assertions deal a blow to the credibility of the Algerian state and the valiant National Popular Army”, Ouyahia stressed.