Algiers - The massacre in an Algerian mountain community overnight on Tuesday claimed 52 lives in the worst atrocity since last March, newspapers reported yesterday.
Security services had reported on Wednesday that 45 people were killed in the isolated community near Tadjena in the Dahra highlands near Chlef, some 200 km west of Algiers.
The Jeune Independant, citing witnesses at the scene, said the death toll may have exceeded 80. The press reports said the massacre, blamed on Islamic extremists, occurred in El-Aichich and Ouled Bouhamed, two remote hamlets about 2 km apart.
The press graphically detailed the horror of the massacre, including the mutilation of a five-year-old girl. About a dozen women were abducted, the reports said.