Attackers hacked to death 21 Algerian villagers, including seven children, during weekend violence, and seven other children were abducted, Algerian newspapers said yesterday. Seven other people were killed in bombing attacks and gun battles elsewhere in Algeria, they said.
Attackers hacked to death seven children, aged from two to nine, three women and 11 men in Ouled Moussa area, some 60 km south of Algiers, on Friday night and Saturday morning, Liberte and Al Khabar dailies reported.
The assailants dismembered the victims' bodies with axes and set their homes on fire, they said. No group claimed responsibility for the killings, the latest in a series of massacres in which more than 200 villagers have died in 12 days.
The government, which has made no comment on most of the carnage, usually blames Islamist guerrillas for such atrocities.
Attackers kidnapped seven children, aged between seven and 14, in Sidi Slimane hamlet in the coastal province of Tipaza, 60 km west of Algiers, on Thursday. Dozens of abducted civilians, mostly women, were later killed and their corpses dumped on roadsides or into wells, according to the authorities.
In Boumerdes area, 40 km east of Algiers, troops shot dead three suspected Islamic guerrillas in an hour-long gunbattle on Saturday, Liberte reported. In Algiers, troops killed one suspected rebel after they besieged seven presumed guerrillas on Friday. The six other gunmen broke through the siege and fled. Two pro-government militiamen were killed in a bomb explosion on Thursday in Larba area, 25 km south of Algiers, it said. In another attack, gunmen shot dead a farmer on Tuesday in Tlemcen region, 440 km west of Algiers, said Liberte.
The news of more killings came after President Liamine Zeroual on Saturday named 48 leading personalities to sit in the upper house, sealing his supporters' parliamentary dominance.
On Thursday, the president's backers won most of the 96 seats in the 144-member upper house in an election by local authorities.
More than 65,000 people have been killed in Algeria since early 1992, when the authorities cancelled a general election in which radical Islamists had taken a huge lead.