Algiers

World champion Gerhard Zandberg of South Africa won two gold medals in swimming at the All African Games on Monday, setting a competition record in the 50m backstroke and helping his team to victory in the 400m freestyle relay. Zandberg won the backstroke in 25,68 seconds, edging Egypt’s Ahmed Hussein and Kenyan Jason Dunford.

Olympic champion Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe won two swimming gold medals on Saturday at the All Africa Games and was denied a silver when her team were disqualified from the 4x100m relay. In men’s swimming, South Africa claimed two more gold medals, bringing the team’s total haul of swimming golds to 12.

South Africa continued to dominate swimming at the All Africa Games, winning five out of six gold medals on Friday. Amanda Loots won the women’s 50m butterfly in 27,60 seconds, Melissa Corfe the women’s 200m freestyle in 2:02,45, and Suzaan van Biljon the women’s 200m breaststroke in 2:32,30.

Banayana Banyana drew 2-2 with arch-rivals Nigeria on Tuesday in their first fixture at the All Africa Games in Algiers, Algeria. Nigeria found themselves 1-0 down early in the game after a dreadful own goal. The South Africans capitalised and further increased their lead after netting a superb cross from the left wing.

Deprived of international competition for 15 years due to the threat of Islamic terrorism, Algeria is primed and ready this week to host the ninth edition of the All Africa Games. The North African state will be only the second country after Nigeria in 1973 and 2003 to host the event on two occasions, having already been the venue for the Games in 1978.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika asked the army on Thursday to step up attacks on Islamist rebels, saying they were ”enemies of the people”. ”As armed forces commander in chief, I want the fight against residual terrorism doubled in intensity,” the official APS news agency quoted him as saying.

Algeria’s governing coalition won an overall majority in parliamentary elections marked by poor turnout, keeping control of a body many in this North African country see as subservient to the powerful executive. The poll was the third legislative election since an Islamist revolt erupted after the cancellation of a national election in January 1992.

Algeria saw the lowest election turnout by far in its history as only 36,51% of the electorate turned out to vote in parliamentary elections, Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni said on Friday in Algiers. A total of 19-million people had been eligible to vote in Thursday’s elections for 389 seats in the Algerian Parliament.

Bombs killed a police officer and wounded five other people on Wednesday on the eve of parliamentary elections in Algeria, prompting fears of renewed Islamist extremism. The blasts came 48 hours after the North Africa branch of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network called on Algerians to boycott Thursday’s polls.

Algerians worried by an outbreak of political violence choose a new Parliament on Thursday, but many doubt whether the politically weak institution can do much to stabilise the troubled country. ”Algerians have a disastrous image of Parliament,” wrote Ali Bahmane, a columnist at El Watan daily.

Attackers may be planning to strike in Algiers on Saturday, three days after twin suicide bombs killed 33 people in the Algerian capital, the United States embassy said citing what it called unconfirmed information. The embassy added it would be open for business as usual on Saturday but would be restricting the movements of its staff in light of the information it had received.

Algeria’s prime minister vowed that national elections will go ahead next month despite suicide bombing attacks claimed by al-Qaeda killed 24 people and wounded 222 others in the capital. ”The objective was a media provocation shortly before the election,” scheduled for May 17, said Algerian Prime Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem.

Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s suicide bombings that killed 30 people and injured more than 160 in Algeria’s capital. Bombers in three explosives-laden cars were responsible, police said at the scene of the blasts. The attacks raised fears of a return to Algeria’s intense political violence of the 1990s.

Bombs killed 30 people in Algiers on Wednesday in the first such attacks in Algeria’s capital in years, raising fears of a return to the North African oil exporter’s recent history of political bloodletting. One of the blasts ripped part of the facade off the prime minister’s headquarters at the centre of the port city.

The death toll from political violence in Algeria more than doubled to 45 in March from February as the army stepped up attacks on Islamist insurgents, according to a Reuters count based on newspaper reports. Of the 45 dead, 33 were rebels, 11 were soldiers and one was a foreigner, a Russian, the newspapers reported.

Algeria said on Saturday its cooperation with Washington’s war on terrorism was ”profitable” but it would never agree to host a United States military base on its territory. The US has conducted joint training exercises in countries around the Sahel as part of the ”Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative”.

A group linked to al-Qaeda staged seven nearly simultaneous attacks targeting police in several towns east of Algiers, killing six and injuring almost 30, according to officials, police and hospital staff. Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for the Tuesday morning strikes in a telephone call to al-Jazeera.

A group of Algerian schoolchildren hanged a 12-year-old classmate in a game imitating the execution of Saddam Hussein, a newspaper reported on Monday, in the latest of a series of copycat hangings. The Algerian boy died two days after the former Iraqi dictator was hanged on December 30, in the village of Oued Rihou in western Algeria, the newspaper reported.

Any terror risk in Western Sahara stems from Morocco’s illegal occupation, the territory’s independence movement said on Tuesday, dismissing a Moroccan warning that an independent state could harbour terrorists. Mohamed Abdelaziz, President of the self-proclaimed government in exile for Western Sahara, said that Morocco’s policy on Western Sahara was the real security risk.

An Algerian newspaper and a press freedom watchdog criticised as heavy handed on Thursday suspended six month prison terms handed to two journalists for allegedly libelling Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. Ech-Chorouk was sued by Gaddafi for stories suggesting he played a role in negotiations among Tuareg tribal leaders aimed at creating an independent Tuareg state.

Algerian police dismissed an announcement by the main rebel group that it had joined al-Qaeda, saying that although its fighters remained a worry they lacked the capacity to conduct major attacks. ”Their threats don’t scare us,” El Watan newspaper quoted Surete Nationale director general Ali Tounsi as saying.

The Algerian army on Sunday killed 19 armed suspected Islamists, newspapers reported on Monday. The army, backed by police, used heavy artillery and rockets fired from helicopters in an operation against suspected Islamists in the Edough mountains near Annaba, 600km east of Algiers.