Four workers from Russia and Ukraine and three Algerians were killed in a bomb attack on a bus near the town of Ain Defla, south of the capital Algiers, the AFP news agency reported on Sunday quoting local sources.

At least two other people were also wounded in the attack Saturday.

Initial reports from Algeria had said that three Algerians and a Russian had died, and five people had been wounded. But the death toll was revised upwards later Sunday.

The bus was carrying employees of a Russian firm laying gas mains between Ain Defla, in the region of Medea, and Tiaret, 340 kilometres (200 miles) southwest of the capital, the Algerian newspaper El Khabar reported.

No group claimed immediate responsibility for the attack and official sources had not reported it by early Sunday.

But security forces backed by helicopters were reported to have begun a sweep of the local mountainous area in search of Islamic extremist insurgents. The insurgents have been targetting government forces since the early 1990s in a civil war that has claimed an estimated 150,000 lives.

The bus, carrying staff of the Russian company Stroytransgaz, was blown up when it drove over a bomb positioned on its route at the village of Hayoun, the reports said.

One casualty was rushed by ambulance helicopter to a military hospital in Algiers.

The Russian embassy in Algiers declined any reaction. But it was reported from Moscow that Russian diplomats were working with Algerian authorities to investigate the attack.

“The Russian embassy in Algeria has established close cooperation with the national gendarmerie and law enforcement agencies… to investigate the circumstances of the terrorist act and to ensure the complete security of Russian citizens in Algeria,” the Russian foreign ministry said.

Consular officials and an embassy doctor had been sent to the scene.

The Moscow statement identified one of the dead Russians as A.G. Derevyakin.

It said the victims were among 21 employees of the Stroytransgaz company who had been laying gas pipelines. They had been returning to their base camp when their bus was blown up by landmines.

A police escort had been accompanying the bus, the statement noted.

The attack was the second in recent months against foreigners based in Algeria, long troubled by Islamic extremist violence.

Last December one person was killed and nine injured in an attack on a bus carrying staff of the Brown and Root Condor (BRC) company, a subsidiary of the Algerian Sonatrach oil company and of US construction firm Halliburton.

The Algerian driver died, and a United States citizen, four Britons, a Canadian, two Lebanese and an Algerian were among the injured.

The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), considered a branch of Al Qaeda for attacks in Maghreb countries, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Sporadic violence ascribed to Islamic extremists continues in Algeria despite implementation last year of a charter of peace and national reconciliation to end civil war by offering pardons to extremists who turned in their weapons.

The GSPC, a small armed group formed by dissidents of the Islamic Armed Group, is the only remaining group from the radical movements that waged an insurgency against the secular Algerian state from 1992.

The GSPC continues to oppose the peace charter.

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