Algeria on Sunday denounced a US embassy alert about possible imminent attacks in the capital, Algiers, saying it had caused panic in a city already on edge after three suicide bombings. "They take us for idiots," Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni told reporters when asked about the warning that attackers might be planning to strike in Algiers on Saturday.
"Who has an interest in causing panic? It is clear that there is a scheming. You do not need an official statement to understand that." The Foreign Ministry summoned the US charge d'affaires and issued "a firm clarification" about Saturday's warden notice, saying in a statement the alert published on the embassy Web site was unacceptable, inopportune and fanciful.
"The authorities have asserted to the American party the obligation to scrupulously respect the sovereignty of the country of accreditation and the principle of non-interference in its internal affairs."
A US embassy spokesman declined immediate comment. Suicide bomb attacks killed 33 people and wounded 222 in the capital on Wednesday, the first large bomb attacks in the centre of the Mediterranean port city in more than a decade and believed to be the country's first suicide bomb attacks.
The explosions raised fears that the north African oil- and gas-exporting country might return to the intense political violence of the 1990s.
The warden notice issued to US expatriates in the early hours of Saturday said there might be attacks planned for that day in areas that might include the Algiers Central Post Office and Algerian State Television Headquarters (ENTV). It cited unconfirmed information.
The day passed off peacefully, but the city of 3 million was gripped by rumours of dozens of bomb sightings. Wednesday's attacks saw a suicide bomber set off a vehicle rigged with explosives at the government headquarters in central Algiers, and shortly afterwards two suicide bombers detonated vehicles at a police station and a neighbouring gendarmerie office near the airport in the city's eastern outskirts.
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