Al Qaeda claims attack on Algerian policemen-Web

DUBAI, Mar 5 (Reuters) An al Qaeda wing claimed responsibility today for an attack in Algeria that killed seven policemen yesterday.

''Our (fighters) conducted an attack on the municipal guard in Tizi Ouzou and killed a number of infidels,'' Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb said in a statement posted on a militant Web site.

The policemen were killed in an ambush yesterday in Tizi Ouzou province, some 100 km east of the capital Algiers, a newspaper said.

Last month, the group, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, claimed an attack that killed six civilians in Algeria.

Al Jazeera television said a man who identified himself as Abu Abduallah Ahmad, a leader of the Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, called its office in the Moroccan capital Rabat to make the claim and warn of further attacks.

''We ask the Muslim Algerian people, to keep away from the infidels and tyrants posts (to avoid) future attacks,'' the speaker said.

The group threatened in an earlier Internet statement to target Algerian soldiers.

Violence broke out in Algeria in 1992 after the 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. But rebel attacks have sharply fallen in recent years.

REUTERS SP KN2154