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ALGIERS (AFP) - Algerian security forces killed seven Islamists, as three others lost their lives in the latest violence in the North African country. Algerian troops killed three Islamists on Friday at Khenchela and one at El-Tarf, 550 and 650 kilometers (340 and 400 miles) east of the capital, the El-Youm daily reported. Three more Islamists, including an emir (chief of an Islamic group), were killed near Bouira and at Guelma, 120 kilometers and 500 kilometers (75 and 310 miles) east of the capital. Also on Friday, a soldier was killed and another wounded in an ambush by an armed group at Djouahia, near Ain Defla, 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of Algiers. A 36-year-old man was killed and his 30-year-old wife kidnapped the same day on a road near Noauflia, 340 kilometers (210 miles) west of the capital, and a school guardian was murdered at Bechloul in the Bouira region, the reports said. The incidents brought the number of people killed in Algeria this month to more than 140 in a toll compiled from press reports. Observers state that there has been a dramatic rise in violence in recent months. Most of the killings have been blamed on the hardline GIA and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), both of which whom rejected a conditional amnesty offered by the government in July 1999. Next week France will reopen its consulate in the northeast Algerian town of Annaba, the French consul-general announced on Sunday. The consul-general, Jean-Claude Schlumberger, said that the mission in the coastal city, 600 kilometers (370 miles) east of the capital, would reopen "in official fashion" Wednesday, but not immediately to the public. That step would follow "as soon as the reorganization of different consular services has been completed." The Algerian expatriate community is by far the largest in France, with the number of visas given to Algerians rising from 47,000 in 1997 to 150,000 in 1999 and expected to be higher than 180,000 in 2000. The head of the cultural center at the French embassy in Algiers, Alain Freynet, said that the French cultural center in Annaba would reopen in January next year, while that in Oran in the northwest part of the country would open later in 2001. The consulate closed in 1995 when France shut down missions in all of the major cities in its former colony, apart from Algiers, because of a wave of attacks against French nationals blamed on Islamists who are at war with Algeria's secular government. Islamists have been fighting since the 1992 cancellation of general elections in which time the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was poised to win. The war has claimed at least 100,000 lives. |
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