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More People Die in New Algeria Violence
ALGIERS, July 23 (News Agencies) - Eleven people were killed in weekend violence in Algeria, including seven massacred in an attack near the capital Algiers, newspapers and the security services reported here Monday.
Seven people were killed by Islamic extremists in Ain Tagourait, some 70 kilometers (40 miles) west of Algiers, on Sunday night, the security services said, without elaborating.
Residents said the victims were two children, two women and three men, all members of the same family who were hacked and axed to death in their sleep at a disused holiday camp by the sea.
They told AFP the father had been sleeping outdoors and did not hear the attack, discovering the dead bodies at dawn. His daughter had hidden under a tree and also survived the attack by an unknown number of assailants.
The girl was too traumatized by what she had seen to describe the attack, the sources said.
The area is considered a stronghold of what the government and Western governments say is Armed Group the most radical of guerrilla movement at war with Algiers and opposed to a national reconciliation policy set out by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Meanwhile, press reports said a civilian guard armed by the government was killed Sunday near the Kabylie capital Tizi Ouzou in the northeast by armed men who ransacked the post office in the town.
For about two months from mid-April, the Kabylie region, home to many of Algeria's ethnic Berbers, was gripped by bloody clashes between riot police and protestors.
This unrest was provoked by the death of a youth in police custody which triggered an explosion of long-standing Berber cultural resentment against the Algiers government but was unrelated to the guerrilla war that has wracked the country since 1992.
Security forces killed an extremist described as "dangerous" Saturday night in Guelma and another in Bouhadjar, both in the far northeast of the country, the reports said.
Also Saturday security forces killed an armed extremist near Sidi Bel Abbes, in the northwest, the Arabic-language Ech-Chourouk daily reported.
The new killings bring to at least 82 the death toll in violence in Algeria since the start of this month.
Since the beginning of the year, about 1,300 people have been killed in violence related to the an insurgency which broke out in 1992 after the army stepped in to call off a second round of general elections a Muslim party was set to win.
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