ANSAmed

(by Azzedine Bensouiah) (ANSAmed) - ALGIERS, SEPTEMBER 10 - "Mummy, I am scared, I do not know where I am, I want to run away but I am afraid they will kill you, they told me that if I run away, they will take their revenge on you. But do not worry, I will find the way to get out of here". These were the last words of Nabil Belkacem, who died at 15 in the name of Allah, in his latest dramatic phone call to his mother. Only 15, a little bit older than a boy, but the network of Al Qaeda for Islamic Maghreb did not hesitate to select him for the suicide attack last Saturday against the barracks of the Algerian Navy in Dellys. In the explosion of the car bomb, 35 people died, 46 were wounded, according to the latest toll released by hospital sources. Abu Musaab al Zarqawi, the 'Algerian', a homage to the dead leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was the battle name of Nabil, who had fallen in the web of the illegal terrorist organisation in the past two months, according to what declared by the boy's mother. She knew also that Nabil was going regularly to the mosque in the district Apreuval, in the suburbs of the capital, a mosque which is fertile hunting territory for Al Qaedàs "recruiters". The family learnt of Nabil's death last Sunday, after the attack, from a group of journalists who went to his home in the popular district of Badjarah,, in the suburbs of Algiers, following the publication of his picture on an Internet site. The image "of the martyr" broadcast by Al Qaeda, who claimed responsibility for the attack, shows Nabil wearing a black military uniform, vaguely resembling al Zarqawi at least in the clothes, smiling. The photo was taken a few months before he died in the Dellys (east of Algiers) explosion, which caused many deaths. On the night preceding the suicide attack, the 15 year-old called his mother from a cell phone. His last words before ending the call were: "Do not worry", said the woman, who after the call tried to warn everyone, trying to find out the place where Nabil was, in the hope of saving him, but all was in vain. "I know that they held him by force. I know that he might have tried to escape, but they blocked him, and forced him to kill himself on that damn van, which blew up in front of the barracks of the Navy to kill the sailors," Nabil's mother claims. And she continues: "They are killing our children." The woman accused Al Qaeda of choosing boys and children to turn them in suicide bombers, instead of selecting grown-ups who have been in the network for a long time. "Why don't they take the adults who have been part of Al Qaeda for a long time?" Nabil's mother says angrily. "Why choose a boy who was a little bit older than a child? If an adult decides to die for Allah, it is his business, he chose it, but Nabil was just a boy and the adults turned him into a kamikaze." Those of the mosque in Apreuval, attended also by the suicide bombers who attacked on April 11 the Government's building and a police station which caused 30 dead, while it is at least of 20 dead and some 100 wounded the toll of the attack of last Thursday in Batna (430km south-east of Algiers), the first perpetrated in the Maghrebi country by a kamikaze wearing an explosive belt and directed against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. But the man was discovered among the crowd before the arrival of the head of state, and in order not to be caught, activated the device, thus causing a massacre of civilians. (ANSAmed).