At least 72 people were killed and many more injured in the double car bombings carried out by a branch of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Algeria’s capital on Wednesday, the local daily El Watan reported.

The responsibility was claimed by the group al-Qaeda Islamic Maghreb through a posting on an Islamist website notorious for carrying messages, claims and videos from al Qaeda and other militant groups.

According to sources from the local hospitals where the victims of the powerful blast were taken for care, some 200 people were injured, the newspaper reported.

These figures make the Algiers bombing the worst terrorist attack in the country in the past a decade. The previous terrorist attack similar in magnitude occurred in the throes of a bloody civil war.

The official estimations said the death toll of the bombings is somewhere around 26, with another 177 people injured.

One of the bomb cars exploded right when a bus carrying law students was close to it. The students were probably visiting the Algerian Supreme Court and the Constitutional Council which are located in the area.

The second bomb was detonated in a neighboring residential district, in front of the building housing various United Nations agencies. The building that hosted the World Food Program, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Population Fund and the International Labor Organization was severely damaged.

At least 11 UN staff members were killed in the terrorist attack, a UN spokesman in New York said.

The cars filled with "no less than 800 kg (1,763 pounds) of explosives" were detonated within 10 minutes of each other around 10 am local time. The powerful blasts wrecked several building in the district and shattered windows within a range of several hundred meters.

"I was in my office and about to go out with a friend. Then I heard an explosion and everything fell on top of me," said a local UN employee in an interview with France 2 television.

The reactions regarding the terrorist attack were prompt. The bombings were condemned by the international community and US President George Bush called those involved in the planning of the attack “enemies of humanity."

In the website posting those responsible for the bombings were identified as Sheikh Ibrahim Abu Othman and Abdel Rahman Abu Abdel Nasser al-Asimi, the CNN wrote on its website.

The attack was describe in the posting on the Islamist website as "another successful conquest and a second epic that the knights of faith have dictated with their blood, defending the wounded Islamic nation and in defiance to the Crusaders and their agents, the slaves of America and the sons of France."