DUBAI, March 5 (Reuters) - An al Qaeda wing claimed responsibility on Monday for an attack in Algeria that killed seven policemen on Sunday. "Our (fighters) conducted an attack on the municipal guard in Tizi Ouzou and killed a number of infidels," Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb said in a statement posted on a militant Web site. The policemen were killed in an ambush on Sunday in Tizi Ouzou province, some 100 km (60 miles) east of the capital Algiers, a newspaper said. The group, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, claimed last month an attack that killed six civilians in Algeria. The group threatened in an earlier Internet statement to target Algerian soldiers. Violence broke out in Algeria in 1992 after the military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), was set to win. Up to 200,000 people were killed in the ensuing bloodshed. But rebel attacks have sharply fallen in recent years.
