ALGIERS (AFP) — A bomb attack blamed on Islamist militants killed six Algerian soldiers and wounded four in Cap Djinet, east of Algiers, security sources said Friday.
The soldiers were returning to barracks on Thursday after a fishing expedition in the seaside town, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Algiers, when their vehicle struck a bomb buried in the road, the sources said.
Two simultaneous bombs on Wednesday in Bordj El Kiffan, an eastern suburb of Algiers, killing a suicide bomber and injured six others. The blasts targeted a barracks and a seaside cafe.
The Boumerdes area east of Algiers remains a hotbed of activity by Islamist militants who use the remote Kabylie region nearby as a base.
Thursday's attack was similar to one on May 5 in the town of Baghlia which killed two army officers.
The most serious attack on the military was on September 10, 2007, when a suicide blast hit a coastguard barracks at Dellys, killing 30 and wounding some 40.
In December 2007, Algiers was struck by two bomb blasts which ripped through a UN building and the country's Constitutional Council, killing 41 people, according to official figures.
The government has been fighting Islamic radicals since after the army cancelled December 1991 elections won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which was later banned.
A near civil war in the 1990s left at least 150,000 dead.
At one point the government claimed to have virtually wiped out the militants but opposition has grown again with the resurgence of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).
The GSPC changed its name last year to the Maghreb branch of Al-Qaeda, pledging allegiance to Osama bin Laden. It has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks carried out since then.
Algerian courts have sentenced dozens of Islamists to death since the beginning of the year, but all in their absence.
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