BERLIN - Until last year, Al Qaeda's affiliate in North Africa was an isolated bunch of desert and mountain guerrillas, struggling to attract recruits, money, and attention. Yesterday's bombings in the heart of Algeria's capital are the latest sign that the network has improved on all three fronts since swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden.
By targeting the Algerian Supreme Court and UN agencies, the attackers sent a defiant message to Algerian authorities and undermined the government's claims that the group's demise is near. They also served notice that no part of the country is safe from their reach, ending a decade of relative calm in heavily guarded Algiers.
Counterterrorism officials and analysts said the Algerian network's operations have become much more sophisticated since Al Qaeda adopted the group in September 2006, announcing a formal partnership and urging the Algerians to focus on French, US, and other foreign targets.
Since then, the local Al Qaeda branch has moved its fight from the Algerian countryside, where its pattern of attacks on police stations and military barracks had received little publicity outside North Africa. By recruiting suicide bombers - a new phenomenon in Algeria - and targeting civilians, the network has learned quickly that it can seize global attention.
"I don't think this implies the terrorist danger from the group is any greater, but rather that it's just become more efficient," said George Joffe, a North Africa researcher at Cambridge University in England. "The tactics have changed."
An obscure faction once known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat took on a new name, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in January. Maghreb is an Arabic word for the region of North Africa stretching from Libya to Mauritania.
In April, it bombed the Government Palace in the center of Algiers and a police station on the edge of the city, killing 33. The explosions were the first suicide attacks in Algeria since the 1990s, when the country was mired in civil war, and the worst violence in the capital in more than a decade. In September, bombers targeted a convoy carrying President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, missing him but killing 22.
Meantime, the group has reinvented its propaganda wing, creating a polished Internet operation that lionizes its "martyrs" within hours of an attack and includes narrated videos of past bombings. "It's remarkably sophisticated," said Evan Kohlmann, a New York-based analyst who studies Internet use by terrorist groups. "It's one thing to carry out a suicide bombing. It's another thing to record video of the attack at the same time."
The network began distributing its videos on the Web three years ago. Since then, the group has set up a permanent web site with recruiting pitches and footage of fighters assembling bombs.
The North African faction has direct connections to the media arm run by Al Qaeda's central leadership. About 12 hours after yesterday's bombings in Algiers, a brief assertion of responsibility was posted on the al-Hisbah Islamic Network, a password-protected site that releases video announcements by bin Laden and his deputies.
That statement and a more detailed assertion were posted later on the Algerian group's permanent website. It included photos of the two men who allegedly carried out the bombings.
One depicted a smiling, gray-haired man, identified as Ibrahim Abu Uthman, who by the site's account drove a truck loaded with 1,800 pounds of explosives into the office complex housing several UN agencies.
The other bomber, identified by the Al Qaeda website as Abdul Rahman al-Asimi, blew up a van outside the Algerian Supreme Court about 10 minutes before the UN attack.
