Eighteen people were wounded, three of them seriously, when a bomb went off early on Tuesday at the Tafora bus station in the heart of the Algerian capital.
Eyewitnesses told the official Kuwaiti news agency (KUNA) that the impact of the bomb that went off at 8:45pm local time was lessened because it had been planted behind a wall close to the station.
It was the second bomb blast in two months, when 34 Algerians were injured in a similar explosion in the capital.
According to AFP, the explosion of the homemade bomb, placed in a briefcase, was powerful and came on the fourth day of Ramadan, raising fears of increased violence by Islamic extremists, who in the past have stepped up their attacks during the Muslim month of prayer and fasting.
The explosion ripped through the Tafourah bus station, which was packed with students waiting for buses to take them to university, at about 8:45am (0745 GMT), witnesses told AFP.
Some students were sobbing after the blast, while others walked in a daze around the bus station, which mainly serves the suburbs where the various university campuses are situated.
Apart from students, the bus station was also filled with commuters off to work or people waiting for buses out of Algiers, said AFP.
After two years of calm in the Algerian capital and its suburbs, attacks attributed to armed Islamic extremist groups resumed at the end of August.
The current civil war in the North African country has its roots in the 1992 elections, which saw the military-backed regime steal the victory of an Islamist party.
Some 100,000 people are thought to have been killed in the war – Albawaba.com
