Assailants killed a mayor and his top aide, Algeria's national radio reported Monday.
Hassan Ghazaili, mayor of Chetaibi, some 600 kilometers east of Algiers, and his assistant, Hassan Ayadi, were gunned down Sunday at a roadblock, the report said. The gunmen set fire to their bodies and the car and fled.
Two others, a driver and another mayoral assistant, were injured in the highway attack, the radio report added.
In a separate killing, a soldier was killed by a bomb explosion Sunday near Ain Defla, 145 kilometers west of the capital, El Watan newspaper said. Five other soldiers were injured.
Meanwhile, Algeria's press accused al-Qaeda of helping to plot and carry out an ambush in the northeast of the country at the weekend, when 43 people were killed, mainly members of the security forces.
Thirty-nine paratroopers from an elite army unit, including two officers, and four armed civilian guards acting as guides during an exercise in the Aures mountains were killed after they walked into an ambush laid by a group of 60 Muslim extremists.
The ambush has been blamed on an extremist movement, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), press reports said Monday. The GSPC is linked to al-Qaeda.
Several newspapers wrote Monday that "foreign elements" had taken part in the ambush. The Liberte daily openly named al-Qaeda as being involved in the attack. (Albawaba.com)
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