Algeria’s Defence Ministry Saturday said in a statement that Algerian army destroyed five terrorist shelters on Friday in the provinces of Batna and Skikda.

The official APS news agency quoted the statement as saying that in the framework of the fight against terrorism, the army discovered and destroyed on Oct. 18 five shelters for terrorists in search operations carried out in the province of Batna and Skikda, 410 km southeast and 500 km east of capital Algiers, respectively.

According to the source, these shelters contained “20 homemade mines, one shotgun, one carbine rifle and dozens of bullets of different calibers in addition to some black powder and detonation tools.”

The security situation in Algeria has remarkably improved in the last decade, but clashes between security forces and terrorist groups are still occasionally reported.

Algeria has also deployed tens of thousands of troops on the southern and eastern borders in a bid to thwart the inflow of terrorists and arms amid instability in neighboring Mali and Libya.