Qaeda claims Algeria bombs that killed Frenchman

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's north Africa wing said it was behind twin bombings that killed a French engineer in Algeria last weekend, and vowed more attacks against "Crusaders", according to an Internet statement on Saturday.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb also claimed responsibility for two earlier attacks against the military in Algeria, one of which it said was carried out by two suicide bombers.

"To the Crusaders and their apostate servants (we say) that the battalions of faith (militants) have committed themselves to targeting you," the group said in the statement posted on an Islamist website.

The statement, which carried photographs of two men it said were the suicide bombers, could not be independently authenticated.

The June 8 bomb attack on the car of a French engineer east of Algiers on Sunday killed the Frenchman and his driver, the Algerian defense ministry has said. The ministry denied reports that at least 12 people were killed.

The French engineer was the first French citizen killed in political violence in Algeria since the 1990s, when the north African country slumped into a civil conflict that killed up to 200,000 people.

The June 8 bombing was the third deadly attack east of the capital Algiers in five days and followed a period of relative calm since December, when at least 41 people were killed in bombings of United Nations and government buildings in Algiers claimed by the al Qaeda group.

The group said the two suicide bombers were responsible for a June 4 attack near a military barracks on the eastern outskirts of Algiers.

Official media said only three people were injured in that attack, which they said was carried out by one suicide bomber.

Security sources said without elaborating that two people were killed in the incident.

(Reporting by Firouz Sedarat; Editing by Tim Castle)