Algiers - Four hundred and twelve people, many of them women and children, were hacked to death in western Algeria's Relizane region on Tuesday night by unidentified attackers in the worst reported massacre in the country's six years of civil war, Algerian press reports said early today.
Victims in four isolated villages had their throats cut and were decapitated, the newspaper Liberte said in its Saturday edition. Some victims were dismembered. Babies were smashed against the walls of houses, the paper said, quoting witnesses.
In the aftermath of the reported killing, security forces swept over the villages, quickly burying victims in makeshift graves, said Liberte, adding that Interior Minister Mostefa Benmansour came to the area. One witness told Liberte he had seen 50 bodies pulled from one house and 30 from another next door.