ALGIERS, April 8 (News Agencies) - An Algerian army officer was killed and 27 soldiers were injured in clashes with Islamists and a bomb attack south of the capital Algiers, local press reported Sunday.
Security forces exchanged gunfire with suspected members of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) Friday in a wooded and mountainous area at Medea, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Algiers, according to the daily Liberte.
The Islamists sustained heavy casualties in the clashes, the paper said.
A bomb explosion Friday at a cemetery in Laghouat, 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of the capital, left 10 soldiers and three civilians wounded, the daily El Khabar reported.
El Watan said that 33 Islamists were killed by security forces Friday and Saturday in forested mountains of Sidi Ali Bounab, near Tizi-Ouzou, some 110 kilometers (65 miles) east of Algiers.
The attacks were part of a large-scale army operation in this stronghold of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), suspected of killing four paratroopers in a bomb attack Thursday.
Algeria's civil war broke out in 1992, when the army prevented the now-outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) from taking power by calling off the second round of general elections it was poised to win.
