Three cars driven by suicide bombers blew up on Wednesday in Algiers, killing at least 23 people, injuring scores of others and reviving memories of the bloody Islamist insurgency that divided the country for most of the 1990s and cost 200,000 lives.

One of the bombers drove his car into the guard post at the government building housing the offices of the prime minister and the interior ministry. Minutes later two cars were detonated beside a police station in the east of the Algerian capital.