Two car bombs detonated on the morning of Dec. 11 at an Algiers court building and a UN facility, leaving over 60 dead, scores injured and more still missing in the rubble of collapsed buildings. When the first bomb exploded at 9:40 AM outside the Constitutional Council in the downtown district of Ben Aknoun, it was heard up to 15 kilometers away. A bus carrying law students to class along the major thoroughfare was crushed in the blast. Just as first responders were arriving the site of the bombing, a second car bomb destroyed the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the neighboring residential district of Hydra. (Magharebia, Dec. 11)

"Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb," previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, issued a communiqué to jihadist forums on the Internet claiming responsibility for the attacks, according to the US-based Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE). The al-Qaeda group published photographs of the two suicide bombers, identifying them as Ibrahim Abu Uthman and Abdul Rahman Abu Abdul Nasser Al-Aassemi, according to SITE. The statement said their truck bombs contained more than 8,000 kilograms of explosives. (Bloomberg, Dec. 11)

See our last post on the Algeria and the Maghreb.