Algiers (AFP) – Two security guards protecting a gas pipeline have been killed and seven others wounded in an attack by Islamists southeast of the Algerian capital, local residents said on Monday.
The guards, who were attacked late on Sunday at their quarters in Djebahia, 125km southeast of Algiers, were part of an armed civilian unit protecting a gas pipeline in the Bouira region.
An “armed Islamist group” carried out the attack around 9pm, and after an hour-long fire fight two guards were found dead, the residents said, citing survivors of the assault.
The attack comes nearly a fortnight after a deadly Islamist attack on a gas plant in Algeria’s southern Sahara desert, in a hostage-taking siege that ended with the deaths of almost 40, mostly foreign, captives.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the global network’s North Africa franchise, has its roots in Algeria, where it is active in the Bouira region and in neighbouring Boumerdes and Tizi Ouzou, regularly carrying out attacks against military outposts there.
The 16 January kidnapping operation was claimed by a group calling itself “Signatories in Blood,” directed by former AQIM member Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
Sunday’s attack victims were guarding a pipeline carrying gas from the Sahara desert’s Hassi R’Mel field to the north of the country.
