Eight armed Islamists killed in Algeria

The seven men, "including some foreigners", crossed the border in a jeep near the town of El Ma Labiod in the Tebessa region, and were chased to Mount Boudjelal, where troops surrounded them, official media cited a security source as saying.
 

A firefight broke out in which the seven militants were killed, the source said, adding that the security forces seized weapons and ammunition from their abandoned vehicle.
 

The nationality of the foreigners was not given.
 

Algeria and Tunisia have boosted cooperation in the fight against armed Islamist militants over the past year.
 

Since late 2012, Tunisian security forces have been battling dozens of militants holed up in the Mount Chaambi region, just a few kilometres (miles) from the border with Algeria.
 

Separately, the defence ministry said an army unit ambushed and killed an armed "terrorist" late on Thursday in the Tizi Ouzou region, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Algiers.
 

The Kabylie region east of the capital, with its mountains and forests, was a heartland of the Islamist insurrection during Algeria's devastating civil war of the 1990s.
 

Violence blamed on Islamists has declined considerably in recent years.
 

But groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb continue to attack strategic targets in Kabylie, around the capital and in the south.