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Rebels kill more than 70 villagers in Algeria - papers

PARIS: Muslim guerrillas killed more than 70 villagers in Larba area and Medea region, south of Algiers, earlier this week in revenge for a military offensive in which up to 300 rebels died, Algerian newspapers said on Tuesday.

Four more people died in three bomb attacks elsewhere in Algeria prompting the country's leading newspaper editor to ask whether the government was really ensuring citizens' security.

About 100 rebels, armed with shotguns, knives and sabres, stormed Si Zerrouk hamlet near Larba shortly after midnight on Sunday and burst into homes, said Liberte newspaper.

"They broke open the houses and then cut the throats of the residents sparing none, neither men nor women and even babies," the newspaper said. They burnt some alive.

Most newspapers put the massacre toll at 47 dead while Le Matin newspaper said 58 villagers might have perished.

"They were 40, 50, even 70 dead perhaps. The number means little (in comparison with the horror)," wrote El Watan reporter from the scene.

Residents in Larba region, 25 km (15 miles) from Algiers said on Monday that 44 people had died in the massacre which took place the previous night.

Rebels, in the same night, slaughtered 22 villagers during a one-hour raid in Aonaria hamlet in Medea province, 70 km (45 miles) south of Algiers, by slashing their throats or gunning them down at point-blank range, El Watan said.

Among the dead were a baby who was beheaded and a pregnant woman who was killed and disembowelled, the newspaper said.

Four civilians were killed overnight Sunday-Monday when rebels sprayed their car with machinegun fire in Tipaza region, southwest of Algiers, said Al Khabar newspaper on Tuesday.

The killings brought the toll among villagers in the past week to more than 170 in Blida and Medea provinces.

Hundreds of people have died in massacres the authorities blame on Muslim guerrillas in the past two years when Algeria's violence took a more vicious turn.

Two girls were killed on Sunday when a bomb blew them to pieces as they were collecting fruit from the family field in Boufarik, south of Algiers, Al Khabar said.

Another bomb exploded early on Monday in Sidi Moussa, south of the Algerian capital, killing one person. And one man was killed on Sunday in a bomb explosion at his soft drinks shop in the western town of Sidi Bel Abbes, the newspaper added.

The latest massacres were likely to put more pressure on the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)'s chief Abassi Madani who vowed shortly after his early release from jail that he and his supporters would strive to stop the bloodshed.

Madani was freed on parole on July 15, halfway through his 12 years' sentence by a military court for threatening the state security.

About 60,000 people have perished in Algeria's violence since early 1992 when the authorities cancelled a general election in which FIS had taken a huge lead.

"Abassi Madani, do you condemn these brutish acts or would you wait to know 'who kills', " asked Le Matin on Tuesday under a headline reading "The terrorism targets defenceless citizens".

But Omar Belhouchet, editor of the influential El Watan, accused the the government of not protecting the public.

"Does the state have charge of citizens' security," he asked, in an editorial headlined "The state is absent".-Reuter