ALGIERS, Algeria, 12 April 2007 — Bombs ripped through the Algerian prime minister’s office and a police station yesterday in coordinated terror attacks that Algerian authorities said killed at least 23 people and wounded more than 160.

Al-Jazeera television said it received a claim of responsibility from Al-Qaeda’s wing in North Africa. The bombings are seen as a devastating setback for the North African nation’s efforts to close a violent chapter in its history — an Islamic insurgency that has killed 200,000 people. Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa has launched a series of recent attacks in the oil- and gas-rich nation.

The explosion at the government building at about 10:45 local time (0945 GMT) caused windows to rattle at least a kilometer (half a mile) away. A charred, wrecked car lay on the pavement about 30 meters (100 feet) from the gates of the building — a modern high-rise that also houses the Interior Ministry.

Algeria’s main militant group recently changed its name to Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa and began targeting foreigners — signs that the country’s dwindling ranks of Islamic fighters were regrouping. Military crackdowns and amnesty offers had turned them into a ragtag assembly of fighters in rural hideouts. For several years, the government appeared to have them under control.

But the Algiers attacks, especially on the prime minister’s office, showed that the militants are far from beaten, even though experts say that they number perhaps no more than several hundred people. Witnesses said at least one of the blasts appeared to be a car bomb.

The attacks were the deadliest to hit the Algiers region since 2002, when a bomb in a subarban market killed 38 people and injured 80.

The Al-Jazeera television station reported that it received a telephone call from a spokesman for Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa saying the group had carried out the attacks. It gave no further details.

The group also published photographs of the three suicide bombers in an Internet statement. The statement on an Islamist website often used by the Al-Qaeda network of Osama Bin Laden said three militants carried out the car bombings which it said killed at least 53 people. The official version was 23 killed and 160 hurt.

Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem — who was not hurt yesterday and had not been in the building when the attack occurred — called the bombings a “cowardly, criminal terrorist act” as he spoke to reporters outside his wrecked offices. Parts of six floors of the building were ripped away, and the iron gates outside were bent by the force of the blast.

Witnesses said they saw a red car drive toward the building, that police opened fire to try to force it to stop, and that the car then exploded. Their accounts could not immediately be corroborated officially.

In Algeria, the official APS agency reported that the bombing of the government building killed at least 12 people and injured 118, citing civil defense authorities.

It said 11 others were killed and 44 wounded in the attack on the police station of Bab Ezzouar, east of Algiers.

Fayza Kebdi, a lawyer who works in an office opposite the government building, said the blast shattered her windows and blew her husband clear across the room.

“We thought the years of terrorism were over,” she said. “We thought that everything was back to normal. But now, the fear is coming back.”

Algeria’s insurgency broke out in 1992, after the army canceled legislative elections that an Islamic party appeared set to win.

Ensuing violence, attacks and massacres left an estimated 200,000 dead — civilians, soldiers and Islamic fighters — according to the government.