At least four Tunisian soldiers have been killed and six others wounded during an ambush by al-Qaeda-linked militants near the country’s border with Algeria.

Tunisia’s military sources said on Tuesday that the deadly attack was carried out near the city of Sbeitla in the militancy-riddled Kasserine Province.

“Four soldiers have died as martyrs and six were wounded in an ambush against a military patrol,” Tunisian media outlets quoted the Defense Ministry sources as saying.

The remote mountainous regions of Tunisia near the Algerian border have been a hotbed for extremists over the past few years. The al-Qaeda-linked Oqba ibn Nafaa Brigade is also based in the same troubled region.

In July 2013, an attack on the Tunisian military killed eight soldiers in the Mount Chaambi area, near the border with Algeria.

The government forces have recently launched a massive crackdown on the positions of the militants to force them from their hideouts near the Algeria border.

In late March, Tunisian forces said they had killed nine militants during a security operation in Gafsa, about 95 kilometers (59 miles) south-west of Sbeitla.

Several security personnel have been killed over the past months in what the Tunisian government described as terrorism-related incidents.

The latest attack comes against the backdrop of a fatal assault on March 18, when gunmen in fatigues stormed the National Bardo Museum in the capital, Tunis. Twenty foreign tourists, two Tunisians, and a police officer were killed in the incident, which was one of the worst militant attacks in the country.

The ISIL Takfiri terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack, which lasted for about four hours.

The people of Tunisia, the birthplace of pro-democracy protests across North Africa and the Middle East, revolted against the Western-backed dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. Despite the political stability since then, insurgency and terrorist activities still threaten the North African country.