Twelve Algerian troops were killed and a number wounded in a weekend ambush by armed Islamist rebels, Algerian media reported on Monday, indicating that despite official statements the unrest is far from over.
A bomb exploded as the troops’ convoy was travelling on Sunday near Khenchela, a city about 540km east of the capital, Algiers, several Algerian dailies reported.
A gun battle ensued, with gunmen lying in hiding on both sides of the road, and one of the attackers was killed, the reports said.
The papers blamed the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), allegedly linked to the al-Qaeda network, for the attack.
In the wake of the ambush, the army launched a huge search operation in the area between Khenchela and Tebessa, 90km to the east, the report said, but gave no result.
In another incident, seven soldiers were wounded when a home-made bomb went off as the army was combing the Bouladahm mountains around Collo, near Skikda, 510km east of Algiers, the Quotidien d’Oran daily said.
On Sunday, security sources said two armed Islamists were shot dead in the area of Jijel, 360km east of Algiers.
In the past six weeks, at least 60 people, more of half of them members of the security forces, have been killed in Algeria in attacks blamed on armed Islamists, according to official and media reports.
Despite the toll, officials regularly claim the GSPC is facing defeat like its predecessor, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which sparked an insurgency after the army in 1992 prevented the now-outlawed fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front from taking power by calling off the second round of general elections it was poised to win.
The civil war reached its murderous heights in the 1990s when bomb attacks and massacres of civilians were frequent.
In February, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika put the official death toll from the insurgency at 150 000 since 1992, and said it had caused economic losses estimated at $30-billion.
On April 6, Bouteflika said in an address to the nation that security had been ”largely restored everywhere across the country”, but one day later, the GIA responded by killing 14 civilians in an ambush.
The interior ministry said on April 30 that security forces had captured the head of the group responsible, adding that only about 30 GIA members were still active to the south and west of Algiers.
The GSPC, for its part, is estimated to still have between 300 and 500 fighters, police chief Ali Tounsi said recently. — Sapa-AFP