Algerian
counter-terrorism forces on Sunday searched around the eastern city of
Constantine after a policeman was killed in a rare urban attack by gunmen
believed to
be from a local Islamic State affiliate, a security source said.
Bombings and attacks
are rare since Algeria ended its 1990s civil war with Islamists that killed
200,000 people. But Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and small brigades of
Islamic State affiliates are still active, mostly in mountainous areas or the
remote south near the country's borders with Niger and Libya.
Three gunmen shot
the officer in a restaurant in a northern district of Constantine late on
Friday, the security source said. Witnesses have been shown images of potential
suspects in the attack, the source said.
"According to
witnesses, these individuals went straight to the victim as he was eating and
shot him and then took his service weapon," another security official told
El Watan, a daily French-language newspaper.
Authorities have
made no official statement.
In March, police
shot dead a would-be suicide bomber in a small town east of the capital,
Algiers. The last suicide attack in Algeria was in 2011 in the same town, when
a militant tried to drive a bomb-packed truck into a police station, injuring
29 people.
Al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb in March also claimed a rocket attack on an Algerian gas plant,
operated by BP and Statoil with state-owned Sonatrach, though it caused no
casualties or notable damage.
n August, Algerian
forces said they had cleared out Islamic State-affiliated militants, known as
Jund al-Khilafa or Soldiers of the Caliphate, from the mountains east of
Algiers, two years after they kidnapped and beheaded a French tourist in the
former al Qaeda stronghold.
Reuters
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