Of the roughly 400 al Qaeda militants said to be active in eastern Algeria’s Kabylie region, an estimated 280 are in Bouira, 73 in Boumerdès, and 50 in Tizi Ouzou, the key strongholds of AQIM. Terrorists attacked a Tizi Ouzou City checkpoint on March 3, and killed a soldier in the Yakouren forest on March 4. A Tizi Ouzou court sentenced two terrorists to 20 years in prison for a 2007 attack on a bus station. There were 65 terror attacks in Algeria in 2012, mostly in the provinces of Boumerdès, Tizi Ouzou, Bouira, and Béjaïa.
