Troops Kill Two Islamist Gunmen East of Algiers

Algerian troops have killed two armed Islamists east of the capital, the defense ministry said on Monday, as media reported an attack on a military convoy left two soldiers dead.

The ministry said two Islamists were killed in separate operations on Sunday evening, one of them during clashes with security forces in the Tadmait area of Tizi Ouzou, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) from Algiers.

The second gunman was killed in an army ambush in the Baghlia area of Boumerdes, some 50 kilometers outside the capital.

The El-Watan newspaper, meanwhile, reported a bomb attack targeting an army convoy in the restive region of Kabylie killed two soldiers and wounded five.

It cited sources in the area saying the attack took place late on Sunday evening, about 40 kilometers southeast of the main Kabylie city of Tizi Ouzou, with the assailants detonating the homemade bomb from a distance.

Violence attributed to Islamists has declined considerably in Algeria in recent years, after a decade of appalling blood-letting during the civil war of the 1990s.

But groups affiliated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb continue to attack security forces in the eastern Kabylie region, in areas around the capital and in the south.