Bomb blast in Algeria: 13 dead
2005-06-09 11:24
Algiers - Thirteen communal guards fighting armed Islamists in Algeria were killed and six wounded when a bomb exploded under their truck on Tuesday more than 400km south of Algiers, Algerian dailies reported on their websites.
The truck carrying 19 guards on their way to participate in a security force mopping-up operation was blown up on a track near the village of Ain Rich, 180km southwest of the town of M'Sila, the newspapers said.
Twelve communal guardsmen died on the scene, a thirteenth dying later on the way to hospital.
El Watan daily said the bomb "was not dated" and had apparently been placed on the track at a time when the Islamists were firmly implanted in the region.
One of the wounded guards was quoted as saying: "No terrorist appeared at the scene of the attack."
The armed Islamists operating in the Ain Rich region belonged to the militant Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), the newspapers said.
The last GSPC attack in the region cost the lives of two soldiers in March.
The Ain Rich blast was the deadliest incident in Algeria since May 15 when 12 troops were killed in the Khenchela region 500km east of Algiers, in an ambush attributed by the press to the GSPC.
On February 21 the GSPC announced it had killed 10 soldiers three days earlier in an ambush of a convoy in the Batna region 430km east of the capital.
The GSPC also claimed an attack on Saturday against a military base in northeast Mauritania.
The Mauritanian government said 15 people were killed and 17 injured in the raid on the base by about 150 assailants in the isolated desert Lemgheitty region.