Top Islamic insurgent killed

Security forces killed a man described as the military adviser to the head of an al Qaida affiliate in Algeria in an assault on a mountain hide-out, it was reported.

Interior Minister Nourredine Yazid Zerhouni, speaking to reporters, did not confirm the report of Wednesday’s killing of Ali Abu Dahdah, whose real name is reported as Ali Dis.

However, he said security forces have “marked some very important points” of late in the terror fight.

According to the newspaper Liberte, Abu Dahdah was killed along with two bodyguards in a forest in the hills above the town of Amizour in the Mardj-Ouamane area. The area lies in the Bejaia region, some 160 miles east of the capital, Algiers.

Liberte did not cite sources for its report and Algerian authorities rarely confirm such reports immediately but make information available to some reporters.

Yazid Zerhouni said progress has been made in part due to information provided by Islamic insurgents who have been detained, allowing security services to “advance in other operations”.

He reiterated that the group behind the April 11 double bombings in Algiers that killed 30 people has been all but dismantled. Police and army patrols and sweeps have increased since the bombings in the capital.

Al Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for those attacks.

Abu Dahdah was a member of a group calling itself al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa. The group was formerly called the Salafist Group for Call and Combat but changed its name after formally allying with al Qaida at the start of the year under the leadership of Abdelmalek Droukdel, a clear bid to internationalise the Algerian conflict.

The interior minister acknowledged the role of foreigners but said it was “not important according to our information.” He conceded that the information “was not always exact and complete.”

In mid-May the official APS news agency reported that security forces detained three Libyan nationals who traveled to Algeria to join al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa.

Among other successes, army forces killed more than 20 Islamic extremists in the Kabylie region around Tizi-Ouzou in May.

The reported death of Abu Dahdah was the second time in months that an important “emir,” as leaders are called, was killed by security forces. Sami Sayoud was reported killed in early May.

Algeria has worked to quell sporadic violence from an insurgency that erupted in 1992 after the army canceled legislative elections that a fundamentalist Islamic party was set to win. As many as 200,000 people – civilians, soldiers and Islamic extremists – reportedly have died in the ensuing violence, which peaked in the mid-1990s.

Liberte reported the group was having increasing difficulty because of losses and recruiting problems. An amnesty offer that is a centrepiece of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s program of national reconciliation has lured most insurgents back home.

European authorities, and Algeria’s North African neighbours, fear the spread of al-Qaida in North Africa. Spanish police arrested a Moroccan man on suspicion of recruiting volunteers for the group, Spain’s Interior Ministry announced on Friday.

Abdellatif Zehraoui, 29, was detained in Santa Coloma de Gramanet, on the outskirts of the northeastern city of Barcelona. Three others were arrested last Tuesday.