ALGIERS, Algeria — Assailants hurled a bomb and fired at two vehicles carrying employees of an affiliate of US company Halliburton near Algiers yesterday, killing one driver, injuring nine and unnerving this oil-rich nation.The driver was Algerian. The injured included one American, Britons, one Canadian, one Lebanese employee and one Algerian, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Eight were treated in a nearby hospital and released, while one remained hospitalised. The statement did not indicate the patient’s nationality.

The attack threatened to stain Algeria’s international security image just as it is enjoying an oil boom and increased foreign investment after a bloody insurgency that wracked the North African nation in the 1990s.

Several employees of BRC, or Brown & Root-Condor, were heading from their offices to a Sheraton Hotel where they are housed in Bouchaoui, nine miles west of Algiers, when they were attacked in the early evening.

BRC is an Algerian-registered company created in 1994 and now owned jointly by Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc., formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, and affiliates of Algerian state-owned oil company Sonatrach. BRC has contracts with Algeria’s oil and defence industries.

Most of the employees were in a bus following behind a security vehicle. The assailants hurled a bomb at the first vehicle, immediately killing the driver, security officials said.

Attackers then opened fire on the second bus, which quickly turned around and left before the gunmen dispersed, witnesses said. Some of the BRC employees, visibly shaken, arrived at the hotel later yesterday, but refused to speak to reporters.

The British Foreign Office said three Britons were “slightly injured” in the attack. The Algerian Interior Ministry said four Britons were injured.

Algerian security forces immediately fanned out through the surrounding area and blocked off roads.

The attack was seen as unusually bold because there is always a heavy security presence in the area, which abuts exclusive housing complexes adjacent to a forest on the Mediterrannean coast.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Algeria is trying to pull itself out of an Islamic insurgency that started 14 years ago and has killed an estimated 150,000 people.

Large-scale fighting died down in the late 1990s, but sporadic violence continues to rattle the nation.

BRC officials in Algeria would not comment on the attack.