Bombers strike at exclusive Algiers districts

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Bodies and burning debris littered some of the leafiest, most affluent neighborhoods of Algiers on Tuesday as bombers sent a defiant message to a government trying to bury Algeria's unhappy past.

At least 67 people were killed in the twin car bomb attacks on the Mediterranean port city's Ben Aknoun and Hydra districts. Scores were wounded.

A sharp cracking sound, followed by the thump of a shock wave, shook the walled villas and winding alleyways that lie amid palm trees atop a hill above the port and its immense curving bay.

It was followed minutes later by a second blast.

"This is terrible -- take cover!" shouted a resident as windows forced open by the strength of the blast swung wildly in a house a kilometer (half a mile) from the Ben Aknoun blast.

A witness to the Hydra blast said: "I saw at least one foreigner injured. He lost his leg, he was speaking in English."

Amid the fear, there was also fury.

Looking at the destruction in Hydra, a young women told a reporter: "We should do something to express our anger. We must stage a march to denounce terrorism, but also to urge the government to do more to protect us."

"EVERYTHING SHATTERED"

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, one of the bloodiest incidents since President Abdelaziz Bouteflika took power in 1999.

But commentators said it appeared to be the work of al Qaeda's north Africa wing, which is fighting to set up Islamic rule in the oil- and gas-exporting country of 33 million.

Al Qaeda claimed a similar bombing in downtown Algiers in April and other blasts east of the capital over the summer.

Police threw up extra checkpoints and sent additional patrols around the city of 3 million people on Tuesday.

Many residents were shaken by the ability of the bombers to penetrate what are well protected districts where many of Algeria's most powerful people have homes.

The neighborhoods also host the offices of some of the country's largest foreign investors, numerous embassies and offices housing United Nations agencies.

"Everything shattered. Everything fell," a U.N. worker wrote in an anonymous piece for a BBC website.

"We were calling out to each other....There were fumes everywhere, we couldn't see anything. I was holding my jacket on my face because I couldn't breathe. It's awful because there are swarms of people everywhere just watching. The ambulances and police can hardly get through."

Few believe that the country will sink back into the chaos of the 1990s, when tens of thousands of Islamist rebels fought security forces in a country the size of western Europe.

Up to 200,000 people were killed before violence started to subside in recent years, following amnesties for insurgents.

But since a failed assassination attempt against President Bouteflika by a suicide bomber in September, security specialists worry that the guerrillas' increasingly boldness is more then compensating for their diminished numerical strength.

(Writing by William Maclean, editing by Matthew Tostevin)