Atrocities continue despite premier's claim of victory

GUERRILLAS killed 18 people in an overnight attack in an Algerian village and four others in the capital just as the Algerian…

GUERRILLAS killed 18 people in an overnight attack in an Algerian village and four others in the capital just as the Algerian Prime Minister claimed his government had crushed rebel violence.

Algerian security forces, in a statement on the official Algerian news agency APS, said yesterday that 18 people were also wounded in the attack on Douaouda village in the coastal province of Tipaza, 60 km (37 miles) west of Algiers.

Douaouda, near the Mediterranean resort of Zeralda, has seen several civilian massacres in recent weeks. Six days ago, six construction workers were hacked to death on their building site.

Another 10 women and three children had their throats fatally slit in November, Algerian newspapers had reported.

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The security forces' statement blamed the latest attack on a "group of terrorists", the official term for Islamic fundamentalist guerrillas who have been fighting the government since 1992.

Algiers residents, speaking by telephone, said that on Sunday night guerrillas broke into a real estate office and killed the director and three female employees in the suburb of Ain Benian.

There was no official statement but residents said the four might have been killed because they refused to pay money to the rebels. Others said security forces may have killed up to six rebels suspected of taking part in the attack.

The attacks bring to at least 38 the number of people killed by rebels within the past 24 hours in Algeria. At the weekend rebels massacred 16 people in Ben Achour village near the military garrison town of Blida, 50 km south of Algiers.

But the Algerian Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Ouyhia, in a speech to the unelected body that acts as parliament, said that "terrorism has really been reduced to a residual level".

"The results achieved on the ground allow the government to reiterate that terrorism in Algeria has been defeated," he said at the weekend.

Meanwhile in France - Led Monde newspaper said it had received a statement from the outlawed Islamic Salvation Army (AIS) accusing Algiers of involvement in "horrible crimes" and warning Western states against aiding the Algerian authorities.

The warning came a little over a month after the rush hour bombing of a Paris commuter train on December 3rd after which four people died.

French investigators suspect another rebel group, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), of the Paris train bombing.

The AIS, one of several rebel groups vying to transform Algeria into an Islamic republic, is known as the armed wing of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), another fundamentalist group banned in Algeria.

The rebel movement was launched after the authorities cancelled 1992 general elections that the FIS was poised to win. Some 60,000 people, including many civilians and more than 100 foreigners, have died in subsequent violence.