DUBAI (AFP) — Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for a spate of deadly attacks that rocked Algeria this week killing more than 50 people, Al-Jazeera television reported on Friday.
Two car bomb attacks in eastern Algeria on Wednesday killed at least 12 people near a hotel and a military headquarters. The previous day a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into the entrance of a police school, also in eastern Algeria, killing 43 people
A spokesman for Al-Qaeda, in an audio message broadcast by Al-Jazeera, said the attacks were in response to the deaths "of a group of young mujahedeen" killed in an ambush in the city of Tizi Ouzou in the eastern Kabylia region.
The spokesman was identified as Salah Abu Mohammed.
On August 8 the Algerian authorities announced that 12 Islamists were killed in an ambush in retaliation for a suicide attack against a police station in Tizi Ouzou.
The Maghreb branch of Al-Qaeda had also claimed two suicide bombings in Algeria in late July and early August which they said had killed at least 38 people.
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