20110928
Reuters
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian security forces killed five Islamist militants in a sparsely populated area east of the capital on Tuesday, a security source told Reuters.

After weeks of surveillance, the military tracked a group of militants to the village of Zemouri and launched an assault which killed five of them, a security source based in the town of Boumerdes, a few kilometres from Zemouri, told Reuters.

Another 28 militants from the group are still at large, the source said. He said they were members of al Qaeda's North African branch, known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

"It is a very successful operation because the region is considered a stronghold for the terrorists," the source, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

"They are very dangerous, and all of them have been found guilty in absentia," the source added.

OPEC member Algeria is emerging from two decades of violence between government security forces and Islamists in which an estimated 200,000 people were killed.

Fighting has dropped off sharply in the past few years but there is still a hard core of militants, based in remote areas, which carry out bomb attacks and ambushes.

In the last major attack, two suicide bombers targeted a security force barracks in Cherchell, west of Algiers, late in August. Eighteen people were killed, according to security and hospital sources.