HASSANE MEFTAHI ALGIERS AL Qaeda claimed responsibility for an attack yesterday in which a suicide bomber blew up a lorry packed with explosives in a military encampment south-east of the Algerian capital, killing 10 soldiers and wounding up to 35.

The extremist group's North African affiliate claimed it carried out the attack, Al Jazeera reported.

The lorry drove into the small post on the edge of Lakhdaria, 50 miles from the capital, Algiers, as the doors opened in the morning to let in arriving personnel.

Eight soldiers were killed and 23 injured in the bombing and two more died on the way to a hospital. Another 35 people were injured.

The suicide bombing - a new tactic in Algeria - came the day of the opening of the Africa Games, one of the continent's biggest sporting events.

Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, addressing parliament, nevertheless downplayed the attack.

"Of course, we regret the attack this morning and the losses, but it is not a possibility that was excluded from the actions of terrorist groups," he said.

A spokesman for the games, Abderaouf Abbas, also played it down. "These are events of secondary importance," he said, adding that security measures had been taken ahead of the event.

Soldiers fanned out throughout the region after the bombing, allegedly carried out by a youth who recently joined an insurgency group linked to al Qaeda, a security official said.

The attack was the biggest in Algeria since suicide bombings exactly three months ago in Algiers that killed 30 people and injured more than 200.

Algeria has been seeking to turn the page on an Islamic insurgency that has killed an estimated 200,000 people since 1992.-AP