We Are All Going to Die

A few seconds after Mohammed Boudiaf spoke the words "We are all going to die," an assassin in uniform raised his submachine gun and fired, killing the 73-year-old Algerian head of state. Boudiaf may have thought he was merely making a philosophical point in his address to a crowd at a cultural center in the Mediterranean port city of Annaba. It was his first trip outside Algiers since he took office after a military coup in January. In the confusion and panic that followed, 41 other people were wounded by gunfire and grenades.

Though the government was reticent, the Algerian media reported that the killer was a member of the security service who acted out of "religious conviction." Suspicion fell naturally on the religious fundamentalists of the Islamic Salvation Front, whose electoral victory last January was aborted by a military coup. The Front was banned, and 10,000 suspected fundamentalists were arrested. Since then, militant Muslims have killed as many as 100 soldiers and police officers.

In spite of the presumption that the fundamentalists were behind the killing, some Algerians speculated that factions inside the army could have been nervous about Boudiaf's announced intention to investigate and punish high-level corruption. Others thought members of the National Liberation Front, the socialist party overthrown by the army, might have ordered the assassination.

Ali Kafi, secretary-general of the organization of veterans of the war for independence from France, was appointed to replace Boudiaf as president of the five-member Supreme State Council. But the armed forces remain in charge, and Defense Minister Khaled Nezzar is really Algeria's top man.