Algerians killed in car bombings worked for Canadian company

A destroyed vehicle is seen in front of a hotel hit by a car bomb in Bouira, 60 miles southeast of Algiers. Twin car bombings rocked a hotel and military headquarters in the Algerian town of Bouira on Wednesday, killing 11 people, official media and witnesses said. (Ouahab Hebbat/Associated Press)

Twelve Algerian workers employed by Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin were killed in two car bombings that struck a hotel and a military headquarters in the Algerian town of Bouira on Wednesday.

The SNC employees were on a bus heading to a water treatment facility which the engineering company runs, according to an SNC press release.

At least another 12 workers were injured in the blast, the company said.

There was no immediate confirmation of other casualties from authorities, but the Associated Press quoted an unidentified local official saying at least seven people were killed, most of them civilians.

The blasts came a day after a suicide car bombing killed 43 in another Algerian town, Les Issers.

Abdellah Debbache, the Bouira correspondent of Algeria's Liberté newspaper, said the first explosion Wednesday ripped off most of the front of the local military headquarters at about 6 a.m. local time Wednesday.

The second bomb exploded a minute later, targeting the nearby Hotel Sofi, the largest in the town southeast of Algiers.

Most victims from the second bomb had been travelling in a bus passing in front of the hotel, APS news agency reported.

It wasn't immediately clear if the bombings were suicide attacks and no group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks.

For the past two years, an al-Qaeda affiliate has organized a series of bombings in the North African country, home to important oil and natural gas fields.

Violence has risen since 2006 when the GSPC, Algeria's last major extremist group left over from a quieted insurgency in the 1990s, renamed itself al-Qaeda in the Islamic North Africa and joined Osama bin Laden's network.

The insurgency broke out in 1992 when the army cancelled a second round of legislative elections that an Islamist party was expected to win. Ensuing fighting between security forces and Islamic militants left some 200,000 dead.

With files from the Associated Press

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