Four Islamists were killed by the Algerian army during an overnight ambush south of the capital, the Defence Ministry announced Thursday.
"During an operation carried out by a unit of the ANP (Algerian army)... four terrorists were eliminated at around midnight, during an ambush" on a road near Berrouaghia, in the Medea region, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Algiers, the ministry said, according Agence France Presse.
The Defence Ministry added that a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Simonov semi-automatic rifle and two grenades were among the weapons seized by the army, AFP reported.
Last week, the ministry announced that two jihadist militants had been killed Medea's mountains, which was a heartland of the Islamist insurrection during the devastating civil war of the 1990s according to AFP.
Islamist-led violence in Algeria has been on the decline in recent years, but groups affiliated to Sunni militant group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb continue to launch assaults and attacks on strategic state targets in Algeria's eastern Kabylie region, around the capital and in the south, where around 40 hostages were killed during the siege of a remote desert gas plant one year ago, AFP reported.
