Sheikh Ali Belhadj, the detained deputy head of Algeria's banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), has urged Islamic militants to call a truce in their armed struggle, according to press reports in the Algerian capital.
In a letter, Sheikh Belhadj asked the emirs, or chieftains, of three armed groups to opt for peace in the Zbarbar region, 70 km east of Algiers, and at Djabri, Korba and Youcef Bouberras, other FIS strongholds, the newspaper El- Alam Essiassi reported.
While the daily newspaper La Tribune also reported the truce call, no independent sources could confirm the move, which would mark a major change in the stance of Sheikh Belhadj, the last of the key FIS leaders to remain in detention.
Sheikh Belhadj (42), a firebrand of the Islamic movement who has been considered close to the armed groups, is being held at a secret location.
President Liamine Zeroual's government had freed him and the FIS leader, Sheikh Abassi Madani, from jail in the garrison town of Blida, south of the capital, in 1994, and put them under house arrest in Algiers, where they were allowed to receive visitors.
However, discreet negotiations between the secular authorities and the FIS were broken off after security forces in September 1994 said they had found a note from Sheikh Belhadj on the body of the leader of the hardline Armed Islamic Group (GIA), whom they had just killed in a clash. That letter urged Islamists to pursue their jihad, or holy war.
Algerian troops have killed 23 members of a GIA bomb squad known as Attafjir (Blowing Up) in a raid south of Algiers, according to the French-language Algerian daily La Nouvelle Republique. The report says troops were tipped off by a rival Islamic group. The GIA leader, Mr Hassan Hattab, said in pamphlets plastered on walls in the streets of Algiers on Saturday that his followers would step up attacks on government forces and on members of the Islamic Salvation Army (AIS), the armed wing of FIS, which it claims sold out on the Islamic cause when it declared a unilateral ceasefire last October.
Two women and a six-year-old child were killed by a bomb on Friday south of Algiers as they were praying at the tomb of a recently assassinated relative.