20100612
africanews

Algerian paramilitary police barracks has been hit by an explosion killing at least four people, including two police officers, a security source said on Friday. "We have at least four people killed and among them two gendarmes (paramilitary police)," said the security source, who did not want to be identified.

Algeria has been waging a campaign to stamp out Islamist insurgents affiliated to al Qaeda. They therefore mount periodic ambushes and bomb attacks against government targets, although the violence has been declining.

Two local people disclosed to Reuters that, at about 3 a.m. (3 a.m. BST) on Friday they heard an explosion from the barracks, which is next to a major highway in the village of Ammal, about 60 km (40 miles) east of the capital Algiers.

Ammal is in the Boumerdes region, a mountainous area which has in the past been a hotbed for the Islamist insurgency. The conflict reached a peak in the 1990s and in total; about 200,000 people were killed, according to estimates from international non-governmental organisations. There has been a marked reduction in violence since then.

However there has not been any official confirmation that it was an attack and an officer at the barracks has refused to add his voice on the incident.

At the scene, Reuters has it that the front perimeter wall of the barracks had been completely destroyed with some of the buildings inside the perimeter also derelict.

The base houses a unit of the gendarmerie, or paramilitary police, who have responsibility for law and order in the rural areas of Algeria.