Presidential under high security

The presidential election on 9 April in Algeria will be placed under surveillance by the security forces who have killed 120 terrorists over the past six months, recording "great progress" in combating terrorism", according to the authorities

•     In anticipation of this election that would allow the outgoing Head of State Abdelaziz Bouteflika for a 3rd term, a safety device reinforced cover the entire national territory, particularly the most sensitive areas, "said Sunday the minister of the Interior Yazid Zerhouni.
  
      "As usual, I hope that we will be “up to ensure the safety of candidates, polling stations and voters,” he added, with highlighted major advances in the fight terrorism these past six months.
  
      Some 120 armed Islamists were killed by the security services since the 1st September 2008 in Algeria, including three important terrorist leaders, after a month of August marked by bomb attacks in Tizi-Ouzou, Dellys and Boumerdès, he said.
  
      Algeria had experienced in August 2008 a wave of suicide bombings, the deadliest of which had killed 48 people in Issers in the region of Boumerdes (50 km south of Algiers), all claimed by Al Qaeda in the Maghreb Islamic.
  
      Mr Zerhouni said, during the same period, 22 terrorists surrendered to the security services, 322 terrorists, many of whom were armed, but not directly involved in attacks, were arrested and 150 weapons seized.
  
      If the attacks have significantly decreased in intensity, armed groups still commit occasional bloody operations.
  
      On 23 February, a dozen Islamists have made an attack, using mortar on a base of an Algerian guard company ‘SPAS’ in Ziama Mansouriah near Jijel (360 km east of Algiers), killing nine security officers .
  
      Eleven days earlier, seven people, including a baby and two policemen, were killed in the explosion of two bombs in Fom El-Metlag (south-east), a region that has not seen as deadly attacks since August 2008.
  
      With each attack, security forces replicate by extensive operations in the Islamic refuges, especially in mountainous regions of Kabylia.
  
      "These highly mobile groups composed often by only three or four members, and it is not easy to discover their caches," says an expert on security.
  
      Parallel to these operations, the intelligence services seem to play a greater role in the fight against radical groups, particularly against the support networks.
  
      Better penetration of networks supporting terrorism and terrorist groups is an evidence of the evolution of technical intelligence, according to the minister.
  
      The daily lives of motorists in Algeria, who live under a state of emergency since 1991, beginning of a black decade marked by Islamist violence which made officially 150,000 dead, is marked by fixed or random security barriers on major roads or near cities, including Algiers.
  
      According to Mr. Zerhouni, the Algerian police has 160,000 members and aims to increase in short-term its staff to 200,000.
  
      
  Ennaharonline / M. O.