Government officials in the region privately worry about the possible backlash in next French elections from a bruised opinion against Muslims in France, most of them from Maghreb origin.
Such antagonistic reaction could shore up the arguments of French far-right groups that have been calling for drying-up the flow of immigrants and toughening the approach to integrate immigrants into an increasingly inclusive French society.
« I offer you and through you to the families of the innocent victims of these criminal acts, and to the whole French people, my most saddened condolences, » said Moroccan king Mohammed VI in a message to the French President Francois Hollande.
« This planned horror is a real crime against humanity, » Bouteflika said in a message to Hollande.
Algeria bears the scars of more than a decade of terrorism when its hope for muliparty democracy and prosperity plunged into brutal radical Islamist insurgency in early 1990s with about 200,000 people killed and more than $20 billion in economic losses.
Algerian government officials had then repeatedly called the international community to come together against the global threat of terrorism but many abroad dismissed their appeals and deemed Algeria’s violence as a political domestic crisis.
« Algeria strongly condemns these terrorist crimes, which attest, unfortunately once more, to the fact that terrorism is a cross-border scourge, » he added.
Bouteflika said such violence must be confronted through international solidarity « under the aegis of the United Nations ».
A Paris city hall official has said four gunmen systematically slaughtered at least 87 young people at a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall before anti-terrorist commandos stormed the building. Dozens of survivors were rescued, and bodies were still being recovered on Saturday morning.Some 40 more people were killed in five other attacks in the Paris region, the official said, including an apparent double suicide bombing outside the Stade de France national stadium, where Hollande and the German foreign minister were watching a friendly soccer international.
The assaults came as France, a founder member of the U.S.-led coalition waging air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, was on high alert for terrorist attacks.
It was the deadlliest such attack in Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004, claimed the lives of 191 people.
Tunisia’s President Beji Caid Essebsi flew to Paris to display solidarity with France where he called the attacks « barbarian ».
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