2009-04-30 21:24:04 -

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Al-Qaida's North African offshoot claimed it killed or injured 60 security personnel this month in Algeria, but denied that it also targeted civilians and suffered heavy losses inflicted by government forces.
The statement by al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa diverged sharply from accounts given by Algerian authorities about violence in April, a month in which President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected in a vote marred by six terrorist attacks.
The statement's authenticity could not be independently verified. It was posted this week on Web sites frequently used by al-Qaida militants and carried Thursday by the U.S.-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors extremist messages.
Algerian authorities reported scattered attacks but not such a high death toll among security forces. Officials made no comment on the latest militant statement.
Algeria's al-Qaida-linked militants claimed to have killed more than two dozen army soldiers or police officers and injured about twice as many during 31 operations this month _ including roadside bombings, fake checkpoints and ambushes, along with a raid on a police station and a large gunbattle with the army.
The militants' claims appeared not to include the six terrorist attacks targeting polling stations or electoral workers that Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni reported during the election, or several other bombings and ambushes that security officials and local media reported this month.
The militants also denied some government and media reports that they had suffered casualties and arrests in recent weeks.

The group made no comment on an alleged al-Qaida video posted on the Internet earlier this month that showed boys aged around 11 toting heavy weapons and purportedly enrolled in militant camps to train as suicide fighters. It did not comment further on its earlier statement that it could kill a British tourist kidnapped in the Sahara Desert unless Abu Qatada, a radical cleric jailed in Britain, is released.
The North African al-Qaida affiliate officially merged with Osama bin Laden's terrorist network in 2006. The group is a resurgent version of an Islamist faction that was among extremists battling Algerian security forces during the 1990s. The violence killed up to an estimated 200,000 people in a decade before largely receding.
Bouteflika repeatedly hinted during his re-election campaign that he could offer a blanket amnesty if all militants renounced violence.