A dozen police dead after worst Islamist attack in a year

AFP - The slaying of 11 Algerian paramilitary police near the desert border with Mali is the worst Islamist attack in a year in the oil-rich state, despite a new regional security pact.
  
The attack was claimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the north African branch of Osama Bin Laden's militant network, in pamphlets left at the scene, a Malian security source said in Bamako on Thursday.
  
"The claim was made in a written statement... in the form of leaflets dropped on the border between Mali and Algeria," the source said on condition of anonymity.
  
A separate security source in Mali described Wednesday's attack as "well-planned", confirming the toll of 11 dead.
  
He said the Islamists had taken two prisoners -- one of whom was sent back to the authorities with news of his comrades' deaths.
  
The toll has yet to be officially confirmed by Algiers but the daily El Watan reported on its website that Islamists ambushed a convoy on the Algerian side of the border, killing 11 gendarmes.
  
The Algerian paramilitary police officers were attacked in their vehicles at dawn near Tinzaoutine, about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) south of the capital Algiers, the newspaper said on its Internet site.
  
The Islamists destroyed the vehicles and made off with the weapons, it said.
  
The Sahara region has in recent years seen a dramatic increase in the activities of smugglers and militants linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which has claimed several attacks against foreigners.
  
Security forces from Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger are struggling to counter the apparently well-organised militants and last week announced a new security cooperation deal to confront what the governments called "trans-Sahara terrorism".
  
Algerian army chief Ahmed Gaed Salah said Tuesday that the military was determined to eradicate militancy and that armed groups could surrender in terms of a 2005 peace and reconciliation accord or await "certain death".
  
However, security forces have so far made little impact on the militants, who have implanted themselves in the desert with little regard for national borders, gaining revenue from ransoming western captives and illegal trafficking.
  
The militant Islamists have spun a tight network across tribes, clans, family and business lines that stretch across the Sahel.
  
They have managed to avoid capture in the complex and tough landscape by integrating into its social fabric: they support poor tribes, finance the digging of wells and sometimes distribute medicine.
  
But they also engage in racketeering, and facilitate the trafficking of drugs by South American cartels that use the region as a key transit point to Europe by taxing and protecting convoys.
  
The fore-runner of AQIM, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, was founded in the late 1990s by radical Algerian Islamists who sought the overthrow of the Algerian government and replace it with Islamic rule. The organisation linked to Al-Qaeda in 2006.
  
Believed to number around 300 men, its influence spans large parts of north and west Africa and it has raked in millions of dollars from ransoms, funding a tiny but well-oiled army.
  
The worst previous attack over the previous 12 months came on July 29 last year when Islamists killed 11 soldiers in an attack on a convoy near the Mediterranean resort town of Tipaza, west of Algiers.
  
Algeria's Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia said in June the security forces would target the Islamists' revenue earners, smuggling and drug-dealing, across the region.