ALGIERS, 29 July 2005 — Algeria came to a standstill yesterday for a minute’s silence in memory of two of the country’s diplomats kidnapped and killed by an Al-Qaeda group in Iraq.
Traffic in bustling Algiers halted as sirens sounded at midday (1100 GMT) and pedestrians stopped to pay tribute to the head of Algeria’s diplomatic mission in Baghdad, Ali Belaroussi, and attache Azzedine Belkadi.
A television report said the minute’s silence was also observed in Algerian embassies abroad, while the colleagues of the dead men gathered in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry here.
Prayers will also be said for the two diplomats in mosques today.
Yesterday’s newspapers said the killings, announced Wednesday by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s group six days after the men were kidnapped in Baghdad, were in retaliation for the Algerian government’s war against extremists seeking to bring it down.
Algerian President Abdelazaiz Bouteflika said late Wednesday that the country “is moving from the shock that followed their kidnapping to the indignation that this odious execution arouses.”
But Zarqawi’s group yesterday told Bouteflika to “shut up,” saying he had “blood, a blood that is pure, on your hands.” The group, which has also killed Egypt’s top diplomat in Iraq, vowed to target more foreign envoys and denounced “infidel” leaders who condemned the execution of the Algerian diplomats.
The statement said “thousands of bombs prohibited by the charter of the infidel United Nations are falling on Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan...and we never heard the denunciations of Algeria, the Arab tyrants or the atheist United Nations.
EU Condemns Killing of Algerian Diplomats
The European Union condemned yesterday the killing of two Algerian diplomats and said their deaths would not stop the international community strengthening relations with Baghdad.
“I wish to express my profound shock and utter condemnation,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in a statement released in Brussels.
