412 Reportedly Killed in Latest Algeria Massacre

Attackers swooped down on four isolated villages in western Algeria after sunset on the first day of Ramadan and killed 412 people, among them children hacked with axes and babies smashed against walls, a newspaper reported today.

The reported killings would be the worst one-day slaughter in the six-year reign of violence by Muslim insurgents opposed to Algeria’s secular government.

Algiers’ privately owned French-language daily Liberte, quoting witnesses, said many of the victims had their throats cut, and some were decapitated.

The state-run Algerian Press Service, relaying a rare admission by security officials, had earlier confirmed a major massacre in the same vicinity, but had said that 78 people were killed.

The slayings Tuesday night and Wednesday morning followed the pattern of an upsurge in bloodshed in Algeria during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. They also seemed to confirm analysts’ suggestions that the militants are being forced to shift their operations away from the area south of Algiers, where government troops have been working to root out terrorist strongholds.

One witness to Tuesday’s massacre told Liberte he had seen 50 bodies pulled from one house and 30 from another next door. The newspaper’s journalist interviewed one witness, identified as Ali B., who said his wife and three children had their throats slashed.

“I was kicked and stomped on before I was hit with an ax in the stomach,” one 16-year-old girl was quoted as saying. “I don’t know how I managed to survive.”

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Most massacres in Algeria are blamed on the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, Islamic extremists who claim that they are performing God’s work by attacking nonbelievers and supporters of Algeria’s military-backed government.

Pro-government commentators maintain that the GIA has lost the allegiance of the people and now is in the grip of a desperate “genocidal logic,” taking vengeance against the general population.

However, there have also been persistent allegations from government critics that the Algerian security services may have carried out some atrocities, targeting areas with large numbers of sympathizers for the militants.

In Algeria’s shadowy and dirty war, it has been difficult to independently evaluate such charges.

The villages reportedly attacked Tuesday were near Relizane, 155 miles west of Algiers, the capital. Liberte reported that the toll was 176 killed at Khourba, 113 at Ouled Sahnoun, and 123 at El Abadel and Ouled Taieb, all in a mountainous and wooded region that has a reputation for being a stronghold of the anti-government armed groups.

Until recently, the bloodshed in the Algerian conflict had been concentrated in the “Triangle of Death” just south of Algiers. But a major government offensive against the militants’ mountain strongholds there since August could be shifting the conflict to other regions where there are fewer government forces.

According to the Reuters news agency, one Algiers resident who recently returned from the northwestern port city of Oran reported that GIA pamphlets were circulating there that read: “We will arrive here soon. We have breakfasted in Algiers, we will dine in Oran.”

Oran, 60 miles west of where Tuesday’s massacre reportedly took place, is the center of Algeria’s vital oil and gas industry.

The private daily newspaper Le Matin reported that a letter found on the body of a “terrorist” killed by security forces and signed by a rebel leader named Abou Djamil called on groups in western Algeria to step up attacks to take pressure off those around Algiers.

The chief of the army’s Oran regional command, Gen. Kamel Abderrahmane, was also quoted recently as saying residents of remote villages should arm themselves or take shelter in larger, better protected towns.

After Tuesday’s killings, security forces swept through the villages and hastily buried the victims in makeshift graves, Liberte reported. Interior Minister Mustafa Benmansour also visited the area, it said.

Police nationwide had already been put on alert for Ramadan. In the 10 days before the holy month began, more than 300 people had been killed in scattered massacres in villages and at false police roadblocks set up by the militants, Algerian newspapers have reported.

Citizens have been warned to be especially alert to the danger of car and trash-bin bombs during this period, and the government has imposed new restrictions on movement, especially around mosques and public places.

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The worst previous massacres in Algeria occurred at the end of summer, when, according to unofficial estimates, more than 500 civilians were killed on the outskirts of Algiers in two attacks against the working-class suburbs of Sidi-Rais and Bentalha.

During Ramadan in January 1996, more than 400 civilians were killed in a series of attacks and car bombings in and around Algiers.

Conservative estimates are that more than 65,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the fighting since 1992.

The conflict began when the army intervened to cancel parliamentary elections that the main Islamist party, the Islamic Salvation Front, was expected to win.

Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, estimates the death toll at more than 80,000. In a statement issued 11 days ago, Amnesty International voiced its suspicions that there may be government complicity in the massacres and called for an international investigation.

“The Algerian state has abysmally failed in its duty to protect the civilian population,” it said. “The international community must not continue to look away.”