- At least 43 people were killed and 38 wounded when a suicide bomb exploded today at an Algerian police college at Issers, 40 miles east of capital Algiers.
This has been reported as one of the bloodiest incident in years.
According to Interior ministry, civilians and security officials were among victims. The attack reportedly occurred, as young applicants were in line, waiting to register at local police academy, known as the gendarmerie.
An attacker is said to have driven a car full of explosives into college premises before it exploded.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but groups linked to al-Qaeda have previously been blamed for other similar atrocities in Algeria.
Today's attack is believed to be the deadliest in the country in several months, worse than December 2007 attack in Algiers, against government and United Nations building, which killed more than 60 people and injured many others.
The attacks were claimed by North African branch of al-Qaeda, known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
In one of the most recent attacks in Algeria, a suicide bomber killed eight people at a beach resort on 10 August.
In December, two consecutive bombings in the capital, also including one at UN offices, killed at least 37 people.
Algeria has been struggling to emerge from a long civil conflict that started in 1992 when army intervened to prevent a hard-line Islamist party winning parliamentary elections.
Violence has however lessened, in comparison with the levels of the 1990s, but there has been a surge in high profile attacks, including suicide bombings since late 2006.
In the same year, government freed more than 2,000 former Islamist guerillas under an amnesty designed to put an end to conflict.
Leader of al-Qaeda's north Africa wing previously known as Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) told media last month that increasing numbers of young men around region were joining the group out of persistent poverty and anger at what he called 'the West's war on Islam'.
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