Scores dead in Algeria blast

Scores dead in Algeria blast

A bomb attack at a police training centre in Algeria has killed 43 people and wounded 38.The Algerian interior ministry said terrorists targeted a paramilitary police training school at Issers, 34 miles east of the capital Algiers.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

In recent months the mountainous areas east of Algiers have seen numerous attacks by al-Qaeda's north Africa wing, which is fighting to set up Islamic rule in the oil-rich north African country.

Rebels linked to al-Qaeda killed eight policemen, three soldiers and a civilian in successive ambushes in the region on Sunday.

A suicide car bombing killed at least six civilians in Zemmouri, also east of Algiers, on August 10 in an attack on a coastguard barracks and a neighbouring police post.

Conflict broke out in 1992 when the military-backed government scrapped elections a radical Islamic party was poised to win. About 150,000 people have died during the ensuing violence.

In 2006 the government freed more than 2,000 former Islamist guerrillas under an amnesty designed to put an end to the conflict.

But a hard core of several hundred rebels fights on as members of al Qaeda's north Africa wing, which was previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat or GSPC.