Algeria was rocked by two further suicide bombings which killed at least 11 people today as terrorists pressed on with a brutal return to the violence that devatstated the north African country in the 1990s.

The attacks came less than 24 hours after at least 43 people were killed and 45 injured when a car packed with explosives rammed into a police academy where university graduates were lining up to take an entrance exam.

Although no one has claimed responsibility for the bombings, Algerian media outlets attributed them to the radical Islamic groups which plunged the country into a decade-long civil war in 1991.

After the latest attack, Algerian state radio said at least 11 people had died and 31 injured in two attacks on a hotel and a military headquarters in Bouira, south east of Algiers.

The night porter at the Sophie Hotel said he was in a "state of shock" after the explosions.

The explosions follow a spate of attacks, the deadliest of which occured yesterday when a suicide bomber smashed into the entrance of the Issers police academy east of Algiers as candidates waited to be called inside.

The attack — which left a crater several metres wide, devastated the academy, destroyed shops and homes and scattered human remains across the road — was denounced by Washington and the European Union.

It has been widely attributed to al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian movement formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which joined forces with Osama bin Laden in 2006.

The group was formed by Islamic radicals who sought to overthrow the Algerian State in a war marked by repeated civilian massacres between 1991 and 2002.

It was driven on to the defensive after Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president in 1999 and launched tough military action and an amnesty for fighters who gave up their arms.

There were hopes that his policies would end terrorist activity all together. But that prospect appears increasingly unlikely amid signs that al Qaeda is determined to re-ignite violence in Algeria as part of an attempt to unsettle the whole of north Africa and notably Morocco.

In December last year, 41 people died in a suicide bombing which targeted Government buildings and United Nations offices in Algiers.

Over the past month, at least 35 people have been killed in five separate attacks, mainly on the security forces

In another sign that al Qaeda is seeking to awaken Algeria's bloody history, the courts handed down 218 death sentences in absentia to terrorists on the run in the first six months of this year.

The former French colony is fertile ground for unrest. Although oil-rich, it is handicapped by unemployment - officially 14 per cent but probably much higher, according to the International Monetary Fund - and a critical housing shortage.

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