Bomb attack targets bus near Algiers-residents

ALGIERS, Dec 10 (Reuters) A roadside bomb exploded beside a bus near the Algerian capital today, wounding five people, one of them seriously, residents said.

The attack happened late in the afternoon 10 km west of the capital in the upmarket Bouchaoui neighbourhood, the residents said.

Police immediately sealed off the scene.

Reporters who later approached the residential and tourist area, which houses a luxury hotel and the homes of some senior government officials, heard two explosions. Residents said they appeared to be the result of work by bomb disposal teams, but there was no immediate confirmation of that.

Police could not immediately be contacted for comment on the incident.

On Oct 30, three people were killed and 24 wounded in near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on two Algerian police stations, in what witnesses called the most elaborate assault by Islamist rebels in several years.

The apparently coordinated overnight blasts in Reghaia town 30 km east of the capital and the eastern Algiers suburb of Dergana were the first bombings of police stations in Africa's second largest country for more than five years.

Islamists began an armed revolt in 1992 after the then military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was set to win.

Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed. The violence has sharply subsided in the past few years.

REUTERS PDM PM0008