Two soldiers, a guard and a civilian have been killed in separate Islamic rebel attacks in western and eastern Algeria.
A municipal guard and two soldiers were killed in a gun fight with militants on Saturday night in the mountains on the outskirts of Gouraya, some 100 kilometres west of the capital Algiers amid a military sweep on rebel hideouts.
A civilian was killed near Thenia, some 50 kilometres east of the capital, on Saturday, security sources said on Monday.
Separately, official media said three rebels of the al Qaeda-aligned Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) died in a military operation in Relizane, west Algeria.
Algeria's military has been fighting militants ever since fundamentalists took up arms to overthrow authorities and set up a purist Islamic state. The war was sparked by the annulment of elections a radical Islamic party was poised to win in 1992.
Violence has sharply fallen in recent years, although the GSPC remains the North African country's largest armed rebel movement with a following of a few hundred armed members.