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Algeria attack kills three auxiliary policemen

ALGIERS — Three Algerian auxiliary policemen were killed on Sunday in what a security official called a “terrorist” attack, a term authorities use to refer to militants, the APS news agency said.

The three had just quit work in the Tipaza region some 70 kilometres west of the capital Algiers and were going home when the attack occurred, the unnamed official told APS, declining to give further details.

Algeria’s 90,000-strong auxiliary police force, known as the “communal guards”, was set up in 1994 to bolster local police in villages across the country where authorities were locked in a deadly confrontation with rebel groups.

Violence blamed on armed extremists has subsided in recent years, but groups with ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) remain active in some areas around Algiers and in the south of the country, and have continued to stage attacks on security forces.