Five police officers have been killed and three injured after an attack at a police checkpoint in Algeria, according to a newspaper report.
The officers came under attack on Sunday from rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire in the Kabylie region, east of the capital, Algiers.<
The area has seen a recent upsurge of violence by a group that claims to have ties to al-Qaeda.
Last month, seven simultaneous bomb attacks targeting police stations in the region killed eight people and injured 24.
In Sunday's attack, fighters are said to have fired a grenade on a police vehicle at a highway crossroads as officers were changing shifts, Liberte reported.
A second police vehicle came under machine-gun fire, Liberte reported, citing witness accounts.
Security forces dispatched reinforcements, prompting a two-hour fire fight.
It was not immediately clear whether any of the assailants were detained or injured.
There was no independent verification of the attack.