Attacks blamed on Islamic militants in Algeria claimed 14 lives over three days this week and left a dozen others injured, newspapers reported Thursday.
Five security force members -- two soldiers and three civil defense members --- were killed and 11 injured early Wednesday in an ambush by armed Islamists near Azzefoun, 150 kilometres (90 miles) east of the capital, according to the daily newspaper Le Matin.
The security forces were searching for an armed group in a forest in the vicinity of Tigrine when a series of explosions went off and terrorists began unleashing gunfire, the paper said. The attackers then fled.
In the district Lakhdaria, some 70 kilometres (40 miles) east of Algiers, six people were killed and three wounded during the early hours of Wednesday.
Among the victims were two workers from the state electricity and gas company, Sonelgaz, who died when a bomb exploded while they were repairing electricity lines sabotaged by armed rebels. A third worker was injured.
Several hours later, a group of six armed Islamists killed two civil defense members during an attack in the area, details of which were not revealed.
Two other civil defense members, commonly known as patriots, died when a homemade bomb exploded in the village of Belfodil, also in the Lakhdaria district.
Elsewhere at Aures, some 450 kilometres (270 miles) southeast of the capital, a gendarme and a policeman were shot dead early Wednesday by Islamic extremists after they searched their car at a roadblock between Batna and Khenchela, newspapers said.
The Daily Oran reported that on Tuesday evening a guard on duty at a bridge was killed by armed attackers at Relizane, around 320 kilometres (190 miles) west of Algiers.
On Wednesday 34 people were injured, five seriously, when a bomb exploded in Algiers, in the first such explosion in the center of the capital in nearly two years.
The bomb went off in front of a candy shop in the old town of Casbah, the commercial heart of the city.
More than 100,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Algeria's civil war since 1992 when the army interrupted elections that the now outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was certain to win -- ALGIERS (AFP)
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