The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, United Nations

Eleven U.N. employees are believed to have been among those killed when car bombs hit U.N. and other buildings in Algiers on Tuesday and more U.N. staff were still unaccounted for, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

At least 26 people were killed when suspected al Qaeda militants detonated twin car bombs in Algeria's capital, in one of the bloodiest attacks since civil strife in the 1990s.

An official tally put the death toll at 26, while a Health Ministry source said 67 people were killed. Algeria's state radio, monitored by the BBC in London, said the dead included three Asian nationals, a Dane and one Senegalese.

"We are now putting the U.N. death toll at 11," U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. Earlier she said, "A number of staff still remain unaccounted for and the situation, as you know, remains fluid." A U.N. statement said one of the two blasts destroyed the offices of the U.N. Development Program, or UNDP, and severely damaged the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, in the Algerian capital.