Updated

A suicide bomber crashed a small truck apparently laden with explosives into a police station in the capital of the Kabylie region east of Algiers early Sunday, injuring at least 29 people.

The official APS news agency, citing security officials, said 15 officers and 14 civilians were injured when the vehicle crashed into the main entrance of the Tizi Ouzou police station at 4 a.m.

The local hospital treating victims put the number of injured at 33, most of them with minor injuries. Many of the victims lived in nearby buildings.

Debris from the bomber's truck, showing a license plate from the region, was flung hundreds of meters away, local police said.

A doctor living near the police station, Alliche Brahim, said the blast awoke everyone in the mountain-ringed town, located some 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Algiers.

A building from which numerous newspapers operate was among those damaged, with its door ripped off and windows broken. The nearby hospital where the injured were taken also suffered some damage from the blast, according to local journalists.

The head of the Algerian police force, Gen. Abdelghani Hammel, rushed to Tizi Ouzou to visit the police station and hospital then convene a meeting with the region's security commission.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. However, Kabylie, the Berber capital, is the stronghold of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

A police station across town was attacked by a suicide bomber in August 2008, killing two officers.

The verdant region of mountains and valleys has become the base for the al-Qaida affiliate which sprang from an Algerian insurgency movement in late 2006.

Islamist extremists have battled Algerian security forces since 1992 when the army canceled a national election that a now-banned Muslim fundamentalist party was poised to win.

Security forces gained the upper hand over the years, but sporadic attacks continue and increased dramatically in July. An estimated 200,000 people — civilians, insurgents and security forces — have been killed since the violence began.