At least 22 people are believed to have been killed and about 60 others wounded in a suicide lorry bomb attack on a naval barracks in Algeria.

Security sources said the bomb went off on Saturday in the coastal town of Dellys, about 50km from the capital, Algiers.

The blast comes two days after an explosion in Batna, a town in the east of the country, killed at least 20 people and wounded many more.

Saeed Hamdaoui, a resident of Dellys, said: "I heard a big blast at about eight this [Saturday] morning and I found out that it targeted the port of the city.

"Then we heard ambulances."

Most of the dead were members of the naval coastguard but civilians were also among the injured, the AFP news agency said.

Van hijacked

A van normally used to deliver supplies to the naval barracks crashed through the rear entrance before exploding, according to witnesses.

The vehicle, which had reportedly been hijacked earlier, was packed with explosives.

The force of the explosion flattened many of the prefabricated buildings that make up the barracks, witnesses said. The port was cordoned off as police sifted through the rubble.

Mahmoud Belhimer, from Algeria's El Khabar newspaper, told Al Jazeera that although there has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, many believe that the self-proclaimed al-Qaeda Movement in the Maghreb is behind it.

He said the bombing was similar to attacks that took place in April this year which the group, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, claimed to have carried out.

Those bombings, outside the prime minister's office in Algiers and a police station on the outskirts of the capital, killed 32 people.

Belhimer said Thursday's attack in Batna likewise bore all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda.

President targeted

Most of the victims in Batna were waiting for for an official visit by Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria's president, who was on a three-day tour of eastern Algeria.

He blamed Islamist groups for the blast, denouncing them as "criminals" trying to harm his policy of national reconciliation.

Bouteflika says he intends to integrate Muslim fighters who renounce violence that has rocked the country since the army intervened in 1992 to cancel elections an Islamic party was poised to win.

On Friday, Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni, Algeria's interior minister, urged those responsible for the Batna attack to turn themselves in.

He said the perpetrators have "one choice: turn themselves in, or die".

PHOTO CAPTION

View of the damage at the military navy barracks hit on 8 September.