Truck bomb kills eight soldiers in Algeria

LAKHDARIA, Algeria, July 11 (Reuters) A truck bomb exploded at an Algerian army barracks today, killing eight soldiers in the deadliest attack claimed by al Qaeda's north Africa wing since a triple suicide bombing in April.

The blast in Lakhdaria village 120 km east of the capital in the troubled Kabylie region happened hours before the opening in Algiers of the All Africa Games, a prestigious sports event regarded as Africa's Olympics which Algeria is hosting.

''I heard a terrible explosion,'' said the owner of a coffee shop in Lakhdaria, a settlement surrounded by forested mountains that have long served as a hideouts for Islamist rebels seeking to set up Islamic rule in the gas exporting OPEC member state.

''I first thought it was an earthquake but soon I found out it was an attack against the barracks.'' The 1100 hrs blast was caused by a truck bomb and the eight dead and 23 wounded were soldiers, the official APS news agency reported security sources as saying.

It made no mention of the attackers, but residents, citing unconfirmed reports, said the assault was carried out by a suicide bomber who gained access to the barracks by posing as the driver of a food delivery truck.

Al Jazeera television said al Qaeda's north Africa wing, the al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was a suicide mission.

''Our martyr was able to enter into the heart of the (barracks) and set off the explosion there,'' said a spokesman of al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb in an audio tape.

The spokesman named the suicide attacker as Suhail Abu Malih and said more than one tonne of explosives were used.

If confirmed, the highly unusual use of a suicide bomber would be the first since a triple suicide attack killed 33 people in Algiers on April 11. Those attacks were also claimed by al Qaeda's north Africa wing.

SUICIDE BOMBERS ''This attack will not prevent us from continuing our relentless fight against terrorism,'' Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni told state radio.

Up to 200,000 people have been killed in political bloodshed in Algeria since 1992 when supporters of a now-outlawed Muslim fundamentalist party that was poised to win elections that year subsequently launched an armed rebellion against the state.

The violence has subsided in recent years but sputters on mainly in Kabylie and nearby areas.

A bomb exploded on July 5 near a car carrying the governor of Kabylie's Tizi Ouzou area in the first apparent bid in years to assassinate a top local official. A policeman was wounded.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika asked the army last week to step up attacks on rebels, calling them ''enemies of the people''.

Dozens of Islamist guerrillas remain at large in Kabylie, shielded by criminal and family links and the remoteness of the area. The region is also a bastion of Algeria's Berber speakers, who have long had tense ties with the authorities, protesting at what they see as discrimination by the Arab majority.

Security expert Anis Rahmani said the attack, three months to the day after the April 11 blasts, showed al Qaeda was now firmly set on using suicide bombers in the Muslim country.

The April 11 blasts were the first intended suicide bomb attacks since Algeria's violence began in 1992, journalists say.

''The suicide attack was expected, particularly after the security services succeeded in preventing any (suicide attacks) in the intervening 90 days,'' said Rahmani.

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