Global Arab Network | Al Qaeda in North Africa claims attack in Algeria

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Al Qaeda in North Africa claims attack in Algeria

- Ahmed Gamal

Saturday, 01 August 2009 22:05

Al Qaeda in North Africa said its fighters were behind an attack in Algeria earlier this week in which 15 soldiers were killed.

"The mujahideen attacked them at 11.30 a.m. like a lion on a prey and they, with God grace, killed no less than 15 of them and wounded several others," Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said in a statement posted on an Islamist website.

The group said its militants ambushed the soldiers' convoy of three vehicles and seized nine assault rifles and ammunitions.

Some newspapers put the number of dead as high as 21 after Wednesday's attack in which a military convoy was ambushed outside the coastal town of Damous, near Tipaza, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the capital Algiers.

Local sources said that the soldiers were returning after escorting to base a group of Chinese workers building the future motorway intended to cross the whole of Algeria from east to west.

The attack was among the deadliest for Algerian security forces this year. On June 17, 18 gendarmerie troops and a civilian were killed in an attack on a military convoy near Bordj Bou Arreridj, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) southeast of Algiers.

The Algerian military regularly carries out "search and destroy" operations against radicals of Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which is blamed for the attacks on forces of the secular regime.

A major hunt was launched in the wake of the ambush.

The military responds to attacks with both ground forces and helicopter gunships, since AQIM extremists hide out in mountainous and wooded areas that are hard to reach overland.

Sixteen armed fundamentalists were killed in recent days in the Kabylie region of northeast Algeria, including close to its chief town Tizi Ouzou, reports said.

The violence has subsided significantly since the 1990s, when the conflict killed 200,000 people, according to estimates by non-governmental groups. But the militants remain a threat, staging periodic bombings and ambushes.

The past two months have seen an upsurge in the violence. Insurgents killed 18 paramilitary police officers and one civilian, according to officials, in an ambush in the east of Algeria in June. That was the deadliest attack in nearly a year.

Algeria, the world's fourth largest exporter of natural gas and eighth biggest oil exporter, has for nearly two decades been fighting an insurgency by Islamist militants, who in the past few years have been affiliated to al Qaeda. (AFP, Reuters, Algerian Press)

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