ALGIERS, July 1 (Reuters) - The death toll from Islamist rebel attacks and raids by government forces in OPEC member Algeria rose to 25 in June from 17 in May, according to a Reuters count based on newspaper reports.

The June estimate, 19 rebels and six soldiers, brings to 207 the number of people killed in the first half of 2007.

On June 10, three soldiers were killed in an ambush in the region of Bejaia, 200 km (125 miles) east of the capital Algiers. On June 24, six rebels trying to sabotage an oil pipeline were killed by security forces in the region of Bouira, 120 km east of the capital.

Algeria is emerging from more than a decade of conflict that began when the military-backed government scrapped 1992 legislative elections a radical Islamic party was poised to win.

Authorities had feared an Iranian style revolution. Up to 200,000 people have been killed during the ensuing violence.

The bloodshed has subsided sharply in recent years from a 1990s peak, and last year the government freed more than 2,000 former Islamist guerrillas under an amnesty designed to put an end to the conflict.

But guerrilla attacks by regrouped Islamist militants persist and on April 11 they carried out their most spectacular attack in recent years by bombing the government headquarters in Algiers and two police buildings, killing 33 people.

The al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an offshoot of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), claimed responsibility for the bombings, the first in the centre of the Mediterranean port city in more than a decade.

The government has said police have arrested the network of guerrillas that carried out the attacks but it is not known if these arrests netted the planners of the bombings.

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