— hollow cells in a honey bee hive —
Algiers, the white city, Alger-la-Blanche, rises from the Mediterranean sea like a mirage. Its white buildings lie bleached in the sun like whalebones. Walking along the sea front, one can encounter both the Grand Mosque and the Casino. Albert Camus attended the lycée and later the university here. On the eleventh of December two bombs exploded, ten minutes apart, one in the Aknoun district and one in the Hydra neighbourhood.
Both were car bombs. Both contained eight hundred kilograms of explosives. The second bomb exploded on Émile Payen Street at 09:52, between the United Nations headquarters and that of the UNHCR – the UN High Commission for Refugees.
The UNHCR sat in a modest building, white with blue awnings over the windows facing the road. There was a flag above the door, a small courtyard, a notice-board outside. The building had a capacity for a staff of twelve. The UN as a whole had a total of one hundred and sixteen Algerian employees and eighteen internationals. The explosion levelled the building and tore through the UN headquarters opposite, stripping the walls and burying people under the rubble. The death toll included seventeen UN personnel, amongst them Algerians, a Dane, a Filipino and a Senegalese. A policeman guarding the office was also killed, as well as a DHL agent inside the UN building. Five other people, living close to the office, also died in the blast. Forty UN personnel were injured, some severely. The man driving the bomb truck was the first to die.
Many of the survivors remained behind, helping to clear the rubble, searching for people buried inside. They included the United Nations’ office cleaner, who was several months pregnant.
Twenty-two minutes earlier at 09:30, across town, the first car bomb exploded near the Supreme Constitutional Court. The building, done in a Moorish style, had been built by a Chinese construction company. As the walls disappeared, offices were revealed inside like the hollow cells in a honey bee hive. A bus passing by, packed with students on their way to lessons at the Ben Aknoun University, bore the full force of the explosion: it reduced its passengers into a thing resembling crushed pupae.