A bomb attack on a convoy transporting school examination papers near the Algerian capital has killed eight police officers and two teachers, local media reported on Wednesday. The attack on Tuesday hit the convoy in Timezrit some 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Algiers, newspapers reported. Officials did not immediately confirm the incident. El Watan newspaper, citing witnesses, said a homemade bomb was detonated by remote control, exploding as the convoy with a police escort passed. The bomb blast was 'followed by heavy gunfire at the vehicles,' Liberte newspaper reported. The convoy of civilian vehicles escorted by police was transporting copies of a school exam necessary for students to advance to high school, the two papers reported. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the most deadly in the north African country since Islamic extremists killed nine people in an assault by mortar on a security firm in the northeastern Jijel region on February 23. Press reports also said that nine paratroopers were killed on May 26, while 10 were injured by Islamists near Biskra (425 kilometres southeast of Algiers), when the soldiers were ambushed both in bomb blasts and gunfire. But that attack was never officially confirmed. Conflict in Algeria between radical Islamists and the secular authorities has considerably diminished in recent years, after it reached the proportions of a civil war in the 1990s. But fighters of Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb remain active in the region around Boumerdes, where Tuesday's attack on the convoy was reported, and in the northeastern Kabylie region around the regional capital, Tizi Ouzou. Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said on May 19 that the security forces will continue to crack down on terrorists, but added that the government was still 'leaving the door open' to those who surrender under a national reconciliation programme launched by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Bouteflika was re-elected for a third five-year term on April 9, and during his election campaign, he spoke of holding a referendum on giving an amnesty to those who lay down their arms, as he has done in the past. His policy of national reconcilation, which the prime minister said would be stepped up, has led to the surrender of thousands of Islamist fighters and put an end to the worst of the violence, held officially to have claimed more than 150,000 lives in 10 years. The security forces regularly undertake search and destroy sweeps in rugged highland regions held to be strongholds of Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, and 10 of the Islamic fundamentalists were reported to have been killed in May. 