20110815
Reuters
TIZI OUZOU, Algeria (Reuters) - A suicide bomber attacked a police headquarters in the Algerian city of Tizi Ouzou early on Sunday, injuring 29 people, the official APS news agency reported.

The attacker tried to drive a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck packed with explosives into the police headquarters at 4:30 a.m. (0330 GMT), it said.

Algeria's El Watan newspaper reported on its Internet site that four Chinese citizens and a baby were among those wounded.

Tizi Ouzou lies about 100 km (60 miles) east of the Algerian capital. It is the capital of the mountainous Kabylie region, where al Qaeda's north African wing has a stronghold.

A Reuters journalist in Tizi Ouzou said the site of the blast was quickly cleared up by the authorities, but that buildings near to the police headquarters had broken windows as a result of the explosion.

A similar suicide attack in 2008 targeted the headquarters of the police intelligence unit in Tizi Ouzou.

Algeria, a North African energy exporter, is still emerging from nearly two decades of conflict between security forces and Islamist militants that killed an estimated 200,000 people.

In the past three years violence has subsided, with suicide bombings on targets in built-up areas becoming rare. Sunday's attack, though, was the second of its kind in two months.

Two people were killed in July when a security bomber struck a police headquarters in the town of Bordj Maniel, a short distance west of Tizi Ouzou.

A few days later, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, as the group's North African wing is known, issued a communique saying it carried out the attack.