Islamic state claims responsibility of Algerian military barrack attack

Islamic State said that it was behind Sunday’s attack on an Algerian military barracks near the country’s border with Mali that killed one soldier.

The militant group sent the bomber in a vehicle rigged with explosives, but a sentry stopped him before he could enter the compound and the blast killed both men, according to a defence ministry statement.

Group’s Algerian leader is a 47-year-old militant known as Abu Walid El-Sahrawi.

Algeria, in common with other countries in the Sahel and Sahara regions, is growing increasingly concerned about the risk of militant groups taking advantage of the escalating conflict in Libya and chaos in Mali to expand their presence.

In Mali, the government has said it is ready to talk with Jihadist groups in the hope of ending an insurgency that has made swathes of the country ungovernable and stoked ethnic violence.

That was the deadliest spasm of militant violence in Algeria since a 1990s civil war between Islamist groups and the state in which more than 200 000 people died.