Security services in the city of Ain Temouchent, west of Algeria, thwarted an important operation for smuggling explosives and chemicals on board of a fishing boat in Bouzejare port of Temouchent towards Zemoouri port in Boumerdes, east of Algiers. The smuggled explosives were destined to the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat or AQIM.

• Well informed sources said that the process, which took place earlier this week, resulted in the arrest of a man nicknamed “Abu Yahia Mohammed” 30, from Tlemcen, west of Algeria, one of the elements of the back-up cell of the Salafist group, as the security services seized, during the process, significant quantities of  TNT explosives and chemicals for manufacturing bombs, as well as detonators.
• Echorouk source pointed that the process came after the security services monitored the movements of the so called “Abu Yahia Mohammed”, until he was arrested in flagrante delicto, as the investigations in this regard found that this terrorist group resorted to changing the methods of smuggling guns, explosives and chemicals that are brought from the western regions towards the GSPC or AQIM’s strongholds in Tizi Ouzou and Boumerdes, east of Algiers, through the adoption of the sea lines instead of land lines, following the siege imposed by the security services since more than a year on all the back up terrorist cells belonging to the GSPC or AQIM.
• This is the first operation of the kind, because most of the previous smuggling operations that were thwarted by the security services have been conducted in land lines, either by desert smuggling lines or mountains and forest lines along the wide areas of Algeria.
• The last operation shows that the GSPC or AQIM resorted always to diversifying its methods and updating the terrorist plans, every time there is a siege on its activities and elements which lead to the disclosure of its strategies and tactics.