ALGIERS, Algeria - A suicide bomber blew up a refrigerated truck loaded with explosives at a military encampment outside Algeria's capital Wednesday, killing 10 soldiers and wounding 35, a security official said.

The site where a suicide bomber blew up a refrigerated truck packed with explosives inside a military encampment, southeast of Algiers, Wednesday, July 11, 2007. [AP]

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for the attack, which came as the Africa Games opened, the Al-Jazeera TV network reported.

The truck drove into the post on the edge of Lakhdaria, a town 50 miles southeast of Algiers in the restive region of Kabylie, as doors opened in the morning for arriving personnel, the security official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the bombing.

The official said eight people died in the initial blast and two more soldiers died on their way to a hospital, bringing the total number of deaths to 10 with 35 injured.

Al-Jazeera played a recorded message from an alleged spokesman for Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa. The channel did not give his name nor say how it obtained the recording.

"Our martyr, with God's help and might, managed to infiltrate the heart of the military camp ... and exploded in the middle of the courtyard," it said. The recording's authenticity could not be independently verified.

A second soundbite aired later identified the suicide bomber as "brother martyr Sohaib Abou Malih who drove a truck carrying more than one ton of explosives."

Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, speaking at the parliament, played down the bombing. "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," Yazid Zerhouni said.

The blast was the deadliest in Algeria since suicide bombings in April that killed 30 people and injured more than 200. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, formerly the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, claimed responsibility for that attack.

Until April, suicide bombings had not been used in Algeria by Islamic extremists fighting an insurgency since 1992.

The suicide bomber in Wednesday's attack was one of four youths who joined the group about a month ago, the security official said.

The explosion sparked panic in a region that saw widespread violence during the 1990s at the height of an Islamic insurgency.

Soldiers fanned out throughout the region after the bombing and security was increased at the Algiers airport with thorough checks of all cars and passengers that caused extended flight delays. Extra roadblock checkpoints went up around the capital.

The bombing came on the opening day of the Africa Games, one of the continent's biggest sporting events with venues in Algiers and the towns of Blida, south of the capital, and Boumerdes, to the east. Lakhdaria sits midway between Blida and Boumerdes.

Thousands of athletes from 52 countries have come to compete in 27 sports. The games are held every four years. More than 8,000 police have been deployed since July 2 for the games at 36 sites used for the event, according to the daily Liberte.

Algeria has been seeking to turn the page on an Islamic insurgency that has killed as many as 200,000 people since the army called off elections in 1992 that an Islamist party was expected to win. While large-scale violence died down in the 1990s, scattered attacks by the al-Qaida affiliate have mounted in recent months.

Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa also claimed responsibility for a December attack that targeted a bus carrying foreign employees of an affiliate of the US company Halliburton, killing an Algerian and a Lebanese citizen.

The group has also threatened France. Wednesday's attack came the day after French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Algiers.

Last week, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika gave a saber-rattling speech to army officers on the country's Independence Day, denouncing "enemies of the people" trying to disrupt national unity.

That same day, a bomb hit the convoy of a top official in the Tizi-Ouzou region east of the capital. Security officials blamed the attack on al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa.