Fundamentalist Attacks Kill 8 Algeria Police

Islamic fundamentalists killed eight police officers Monday--six of them in an ambush in the Casbah, the ancient quarter of the capital that was a haven for Algerian revolutionaries in past decades.

The assaults on police were the most deadly since the military took power a month ago and indicated a hardening of the fundamentalists’ response to an escalating government crackdown.

On Sunday, the government banned the Islamic Salvation Front, the nation’s largest political party, and declared a state of emergency that gives authorities broad powers to make arrests, ban demonstrations and dissolve local councils.

The actions followed a week of unrest that left more than 40 people dead and 300 injured.

The capital was relatively calm Monday, state radio reported, and schools, businesses and government offices operated normally. Security forces withdrew from many strategic sites during the day, but witnesses said soldiers were moving into the fundamentalist slum of Bab al Oued at nightfall.

The Salvation Front was on the verge of winning control of the National Assembly last month in the second round of Algeria’s first free elections since independence from France in 1962.

But the military forced President Chadli Bendjedid to resign after it became apparent that he was planning to share power with the fundamentalists, and the new military-backed government called off the elections.

In the latest violence, police said, six officers died Monday when their cars were riddled with gunfire near a mosque. The attackers, who police said had fought alongside Muslim guerrillas in the Afghan war, reportedly took refuge in the Casbah after the pre-dawn shootings.

Two other officers were slain Monday by companions of a fundamentalist they were trying to arrest in Bordj Menaiel, 40 miles east of the capital, police said. One attacker was shot and killed by police; the others escaped.

A policeman also was killed Saturday in the Casbah, an ancient quarter of the city with tiny, winding streets and tightly packed houses that was a stronghold of revolutionaries who battled the French from 1954-62.