TEN women and three children had their throats slashed by Islamic militants in the village of Douaouda, 3Okm west of Algiers at the weekend.
Throat-slashing is the signature method of killing of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the most radical of several Muslim groups fighting to overthrow Algeria's military-backed government.
Algerian officials would not confirm the report in Liberte but credible sources in Algiers said it was true. Liberte's reporter had attended the funerals of the victims on Monday and wrote his account from eyewitness reports. Villagers said a group of about 20 armed men lobbed a grenade into the house where the women and children were sleeping, then killed them as they tried to flee.
Because the government heavily censors news in Algeria, rumours spread quickly. Although the presidency denied that Sheikh Ali Belhadj, the vice-president of the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), has died in prison, residents of Algiers are talking of little else.
In recent days, exiled FIS activists claimed Mr Belhadj was gravely ill. He was last reported to be imprisoned at Tamanrasset in the southern Algerian desert; the Algerian journalist who reported his whereabouts was jailed.
Mr Belhadj's lawyers have not seen him for 18 months, and his family has been denied visits for the past two years. The 40-year-old leader is more charismatic than the FIS president, Mr Abassi Madani, and it was Mr Belhadj who attracted millions of young Algerians to the movement before his arrest in 1991.
If news of his death was confirmed, it could provoke violence on an unprecedented scale in Algeria, where more than 50,000 people have died in nearly five years of strife.
The women and children murdered in Douaouda are believed to have been the families of"communal guards", the government-sponsored militia established over the past 18 months to counter the Islamists. The communal guards mount night patrols and barricades to hamper the movements of guerrillas. This would explain the absence of men among the victims.
In recent months, Islamist militants have concentrated on fighting the communal guards. The government had managed to reassert control in some areas by using the militia, but the strategy proved destabilising: the guards became targets, in part because the guerrillas wanted to seize the weapons supplied by the government.
The guerrillas avenge themselves on villages which set up pro-government militias. For example, a recent car bomb which killed 18 people in the town of Boufarik was set off after residents established a guards corps.
The Kolea region to the west of Algiers, where the women and children were massacred, has been hit hard by guerrillas, who apparently reproach residents for turning against them after having supported them. In addition to assassinations of government employees and security forces, civilians are hit arbitrarily by bombs in markets and cafes.
Algerian officials are beginning to admit that their country is far from stopping the bloodshed provoked by the cancellation of parliamentary elections in January 1992.
Gen Ali Tounsi, the head of national security, told El Watan newspaper recently that Bit will take two or three more years to eradicate terrorism". The guerrillas have stepped up attacks prior to the November 28th constitutional referendum, which will consolidate the regime's power.
