Two security guards protecting a gas pipeline have been killed and seven others wounded in an attack by Islamists southeast of the Algerian capital, local residents said on Monday.
Two security guards protecting a gas pipeline have been killed and seven
others wounded in an attack by Islamists southeast of the Algerian capital,
local residents said on Monday.
The guards, who were attacked late on Sunday at their quarters in Djebahia, 125
kilometers southeast of
Algiers
, were
part of an armed civilian unit protecting a gas pipeline in the Bouira region.
An "armed Islamist group" carried out the attack around
9:00 pm
(2000 GMT), and after an hour-long firefight two
guards were found dead, the residents said, citing survivors of the assault.
A medical source told AFP the bodies of the two guards killed were transferred
to Mohamed Boudiaf de Bouira hospital, where five of their colleagues were
taken for treatment of gunshot wounds.
The army has launched a search operation for the assailants who fled, the
residents said.
The attack comes nearly a fortnight after a deadly Islamist attack on a gas
plant in
Algeria
's
southern
Sahara
desert, in a hostage-taking siege that ended with
the deaths of almost 40 captives, mostly foreigners.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the global network's North Africa franchise,
has its roots in Algeria, where it is active in the Bouira region and in
neighbouring Boumerdes and Tizi Ouzou, regularly carrying out attacks against
military outposts there.
The January 16 kidnapping operation was claimed by a group calling itself "Signatories
in Blood," directed by former AQIM member Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
Sunday's attack victims were guarding a pipeline carrying gas from the
Sahara
desert's Hassi R'Mel field to the north of the country.
Gas pipeline attacks by armed Islamist groups were common during
Algeria
civil
war of the 1990s.
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