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Five killed in Algeria

ALGIERS: Muslim militants in Algeria have killed five villagers, including an eight-month old baby, the newspaper Le Matin reported on Sunday.

The deaths brought to 22 the number of civilians killed in militant attacks between Wednesday and Friday last week, it said.

Guerrillas stormed the small Sidi Brahim village in Medea area, 70 km (45 miles) south of Algiers, killing a woman, a 15-year-old girl, two children aged eight months and four years and a man, on Friday night.

Le Matin said the victims were from three separate families whose houses were singled out in the militant attack.

The newspaper gave no further details but said the assailants had stolen food before they fled into the nearby Bouassir forest.

Le Matin reported on Saturday that seven civilians were killed in a roadside ambush also in Medea on Thursday.

Rebels killed seven more civilians in a similar attack in Tissemsilt area, some 220 km southwest of Algiers, on Wednesday, said the newspaper, adding that the ambushes were a new rebel tactic.

Three fishermen were killed in a militant attack on Wednesday on a beach at Plage Koulie village in Tipaza province, 60 km west of the Algerian capital, Le Matin said.

The newspaper blamed the Islamic Armed Group (GIA), Algeria's most radical guerrilla faction, for the attacks.

The GIA and the hardline Da'wa wal Djihad (Appeal and Struggle) are the main groups still fighting the government.

Two relatively moderate guerrilla factions, the Islamic Salvation Army and the Islamic League for Appeal and Struggle, disbanded under an amnesty which expired last month.

Algeria has been racked by violence since early 1992 when the authorities cancelled a general election in which Muslim militants had taken a commanding lead.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika vowed an all-out assault on militants who dismissed the amnesty which was a main plank of his peace drive to end eight years of civil strife in which he says 100,000 people have been killed.-Reuters