One of the wounded is in serious condition.
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Twenty-three people were wounded on Saturday when a suicide bomber drove a four-wheel drive vehicle packed with explosives at a paramilitary police base in a Sahara desert town, local media and security officials said.
The attack was the first in the town of Tamanrasset, an oasis about 2,000 km (1,240) miles south of the Algerian capital, and underscored mounting instability in the Sahara desert after the conflict in nearby Libya.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack, but al Qaeda's north African wing, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), has for years been waging an insurgency in Algeria and neighboring countries.
The wounded people were 15 gendarmes, or paramilitary police, five members of the civil protection service and three civilians who were passing when the attack happened, Algeria's APS state news agency quoted a gendarme official as saying.
One of the wounded gendarmes was in serious condition, the official was quoted as saying.
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