|
Twenty-Three Massacred In Algerian Hamlet
WASHINGTON & ALGIERS (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Twenty-three people have been massacred in an armed attack on an isolated hamlet in the Chlef region of northwestern Algeria, residents said Friday.
The attack appeared to be a new episode in a bloody campaign between the Algerian regime and Islamists, a conflict which has claimed at least 100,000 lives since 1992.
Local people initially said 17 people were killed when an armed gang attacked the small village in the forested highlands of the Dahra region, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Chlef and about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the capital Algiers, on Thursday evening.
Later, the bodies of six other people who had been kidnapped during the attack were found. One person was wounded but survived the assault on the community of herders and small farmers.
An armed group on Tuesday killed 12 people at a roadblock near Khemis Miliana, 120 kilometers (75 miles) from Algiers, on the national highway linking the capital with the main western coastal city of Oran.
The victims of that attack were machine-gunned, stabbed and burned alive in a truck, witnesses said.
More than 125 people have lost their lives in Algeria's violence since the beginning of the year, according to a toll based on the rare official reports and on details from witnesses and the press.
The killing is usually attributed to the Armed Islamic Group and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, two movements that have rejected a national reconciliation policy put forward by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in 1999.
The AIS was the armed wing of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which was poised to win a general election in January 1992 before the army intervened to call off the poll. The secular authorities subsequently outlawed the FIS.
However, violence attributed to Islamist groups by the Algerian government has at times been suspected of emanating from Algiers as reports and confessions of former armed forces and police state that Algerian troops, disguised as either Islamists or wearing masks, have committed atrocities and later blaming Islamists for the violence.
In a recent interview with IslamOnline, Anwar Haddam, held in the U.S. on secret evidence charges and a former member of the Algerian parliament representing the FIS, stated the coincidence that violent and atrocious attacks are occurring in regions of the country where there is strong support for Algerian Islamists.
In July 1999, Algerian authorities offered an amnesty to those opposing the government who were not guilty of murder, rape and other "blood crimes".
At least 4,000 people were reported to have turned themselves in and the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS) was declared dissolved.
|
