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ALGIERS (AFP) - A soldier was killed when a bomb blew up by his patrol in an ambush by an Islamic activists near Mascara in western Algeria, as troops shot back killing one of the attackers. The Muslim activist killed in Wednesday's incident at Bouhanifia, 340 kilometers (210 miles) west of Algiers, was believed to have been an emir, or leader, of one of the Islamist groups, known as Bounab, the El-Youm daily said. According to a toll based on press reports, nearly 70 people have been killed in attacks, particularly against the army, since the start of October by groups fighting the secular government. Government officials and the state media have made no comment on the latest, almost daily, reports of clashes and massacres of civilians in the private newspapers. On Wednesday, the daily Le Matin reported that a woman and her five children had their throats slit in an attack in a small hamlet near Relizane in the northwest on Monday. The woman's husband was an armed civilian guard. Most of the recent attacks have been blamed on the hardline Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which both rejected a conditional amnesty offered by the government to Islamic groups for six months from July 1999. But hundreds of guerrillas did surrender. A resurgence in Islamist activity has taken place in recent months. Insurgents have been fighting since the 1992 cancellation of general elections the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was poised to win. The violence has claimed at least 100,000 lives. |
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