Al-Qaeda Branch Claims Algeria Blasts

Benmoussa and other Moroccan officials suggested the cell was self-organized and had no international connections. But Mohamed Darif, a terrorism analyst at Hassan II University in Mohammedia, said it was a "myth" that the group acted alone.

In a telephone interview, he said each of the four bombers killed Tuesday was associated with other radicals involved in regional groups. He also said the types of explosives used and the willingness of the cell members to die as a group indicated a degree of sophistication that could have been taught only by experienced trainers or recruiters.

"There are several factors to indicate that these four people were connected with the larger al-Qaeda" network in North Africa, Darif said. "These matters must be taken seriously. We must stop downplaying these incidents and ascribing them to simple local causes."

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, a local network that fought unsuccessfully for years to topple the secular Algerian government. An estimated 200,000 people have died since that conflict broke out in 1992.

In September, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, announced in a videotaped speech that his movement had struck a formal partnership with the Algerian group and urged it to broaden its targets to include France and the United States. Four months later, the Algerian network changed its name to reflect its new standing.

Algerian officials had played down the partnership, calling it the last gasp of a dying insurgency that had lost popular support. "Their threats don't scare us," Ali Tounsi, director general of the Algerian national police, said last September. "If they had the means to do something, they would have already done it."

Since then, however, the group has displayed renewed strength in Algeria and has partnered with radical groups in Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania and Morocco, according to U.S. and North African counterterrorism officials.

In December, two vehicles carrying employees of a subsidiary of the U.S. contractor Halliburton came under attack outside Algiers. One driver was killed and nine people were injured. Last month, the U.S. Embassy in Algiers posted public warnings that "extremists" were plotting an attack on a commercial aircraft carrying Western workers in Algeria.

With the attacks this week, "we know that the new organization is able to perpetuate attacks on a level they weren't able to before," said Guido Steinberg, a former German government counterterrorism official who now works as an analyst for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Staff writer Robin Wright and staff researchers Robert E. Thomason and Julie Tate in Washington and special correspondent Munir Ladaa in Berlin contributed to this report.