Algiers - Presumed members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have killed six people in two separate attacks in Algeria over the weekend, local media reported on Monday.

On a farm in the north-east of the country, the attackers first forced the farmer to watch as they slaughtered his flock of 300 sheep, the daily Liberte reported. Then they killed the farmer in front of his family before detonating a bomb that took the lives of three other family members and another person.

Algiers - A suicide bomber killed at least two people in an attack on a police station in northern Algeria on Saturday, according to state radio.

A man with an explosives belt tried to gain entry to a police barracks in Tadmait, about 17 kilometeres west of the regional capital of Tizi Ouzou, according to details in the online edition of El Watan newspaper.

A police officer shot the bomber, but not before he managed to blow himself up, killing a 50-year-old woman and a policeman.

Paris  - Nine employees of a security company were killed in an attack by presumed Islamist mil

Algiers  - Seven Algerian soldiers were killed in two separate incidents by suspected Islamist terrorists, local media reported on Tuesday.

At Tebessa, some 630 kilometres east of the capital Algiers, four soldiers died when a bomb exploded under a lorry carrying military supplies late Sunday.

A second bomb targeting another lorry seriously injured six other soldiers.

Also on Sunday, three soldiers were killed after the bus on which they were traveling was stopped at a roadblock erected by suspected Islamist rebels near the city of Boumerdes, some 50 kilometres east of Algiers.

Witnesses said the attackers killed the soldiers with knives and then filmed the gruesome scene.

Algiers  - Algerian Presidnet Abdelaziz Bouteflika has set a date of April 9 for presidential elections, and has invited several international groups to send observers, Algiers said Saturday.

A presidential palace statement said Bouteflika had named former justice minister Mohamed Teguia to head the election commission for the voting.

He also invited the Organisation of Islamic Conference, the Arab League and the African Union to send observers to monitor the elections, the statment said.