ALGIERS: Al Qaeda-linked militants have claimed responsibility for killing 11 Algerian paramilitary police in the oil-rich state’s deadliest attack in a year.
The dawn ambush on Wednesday near the border with Mali mocked a new regional security cooperation effort designed to snuff out the growing threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
The group claimed the attack in pamphlets left at the scene, a Malian security source said in Bamako on Thursday. The claim was made in leaflets dropped on the border between Mali and Algeria, the source said on condition of anonymity.
A separate security source in Mali confirming the toll of 11 dead. The source said the Islamists took two prisoners — one of whom was sent back to the authorities with news of his comrades’ deaths.
The toll has yet to be officially confirmed by Algiers but the daily El Watan first reported the ambush.
The paramilitary police were attacked in their vehicles near Tinzaoutine, about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) south of Algiers, the newspaper said.
The Islamists destroyed the vehicles and made off with weapons.
The Sahara region has in recent years seen a dramatic increase in the activities of smugglers and militants linked to AQIM, which has claimed several attacks on foreigners.
Security forces from Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger last week announced a new security cooperation deal to confront what the governments called "trans-Sahara terrorism".
Algerian army chief Ahmed Gaed Salah said the military was determined to eradicate militancy and that armed groups could surrender under a 2005 peace and reconciliation accord or await "certain death".
However, security forces have so far made little impact on the militants, who have implanted themselves in the desert with little regard for national borders, gaining revenue from ransoming western captives and illegal trafficking.
Two Spaniards and a Frenchman are still being held by the group.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika appealed for outside help during meetings at the Group of Eight summit in Canada last week, suggesting that regional terrorism, if left unchecked, could become a global threat.
He told a meeting of G8 leaders with their African counterparts that Algeria was counting on the world’s rich countries to provide intelligence, equipment and training to help counter terrorism in the Sahel region where he said there were "serious risks."
"Perhaps it would turn into a starting point for the expansion of terrorism to other regions of the continent and the world," he said.
The militant Islamists have spun a tight network across tribes, clans, family and business lines that stretch across the Sahel.
They have integrated into the social fabric, supporting tribes, financing the digging of wells and even sometimes distributing medicine.
Authorities say they also engage in racketeering, and facilitate the trafficking of drugs by South American cartels that use the region as a transit point to Europe by taxing and protecting convoys.
The forerunner of AQIM, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, was founded in the 1990s by Algerian Islamists who sought the overthrow of the government and replace it with Islamic rule. The organisation linked to Al-Qaeda in 2006.
Believed to number around 300 men, its influence spans large parts of north and west Africa and it has raked in millions of dollars from ransoms, funding a tiny but well-oiled army.
The worst previous attack over the previous 12 months came on July 29 last year when Islamists killed 11 soldiers near the Mediterranean town of Tipaza, west of Algiers.
