Thirteen people have been killed by a group of armed Islamic extremists in Algeria's Ain Defla province, 160 kilometers west of the capital Algiers, security forces said today.
They said the attack took place yesterday evening in the town of Oeud Chorfa.
In a separate attack in the town of Douar Djebailia, allegedly carried out by the same group, a child was wounded and a woman kidnapped, the security forces said.
A search has been mounted to find the assailants, they said.
Members of the hardline Armed Islamic Group (GIA) have been regularly accused by the government of carrying out killings in provinces to the west of the capital.
Seven people were killed last week in an attack, also blamed on the GIA, in the town of Ammi Moussa, in Relizane province, 300 kilometers west of Algiers, according to officials.
Last month, more than 140 people were killed in Algeria in violence blamed on the GIA and another extremist group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).
Both groups want to see an Islamist government installed in Algeria and have rejected President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's national reconciliation plan, put forward in 1999 in a bid to end the north African country's decade-long civil war.
AFP