Muslim rebels slit the throats of 20 people and wounded two others in two massacres overnight, government security forces said yesterday. The massacres, which followed three similar atrocities in poor villages in the past 12 days, took place during a visit by a high-powered UN fact-finding panel despatched by the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan.
The panel, led by the former Portuguese president, Mr Mario Soares, arrived on Wednesday for a two-week visit.
It is holding talks with government leaders, opposition politicians and human rights activists to try to get a picture of Algeria's six-year conflict.
Muslim rebels stormed the hamlet of Khelil in Tlemcen province, 440 km west of Algiers, killing 12 people and wounding two, security forces said in a statement carried by the official news agency, APS.
"The 12 people were killed in a cowardly way," they said, using the official euphemism for throat-slitting.
In another statement read on state-run radio, the security forces said eight people had been killed overnight by Muslim rebels in the hamlet of Sidi Abdelmoumen in Saida province, 330 km southwest of Algiers. They also had their throats cut.
According to the government forces, Muslim rebels killed 11 villagers at Rebaia hamlet south of Algiers seven days ago, and the previous week slaughtered at least 13 peasants, including women and children, in the Tiaret region.
On Saturday the pro-government daily, L'Authentique, said elite government troops had killed at least 100 rebels of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in a forest in Tizi Ouzou province, east of Algiers.
The government blames the GIA, Algeria's most radical guerrilla faction, for most of the massacres, in which thousands of civilians, mostly poor villagers, have been killed in the past two years.
Human rights groups and some Western powers have urged the government to allow an independent investigation.
Algeria dismissed the idea as an infringement of sovereignty before finally agreeing to accept the UN panel. The government has been at pains to stress that the panel has no mandate to investigate the killings, but only to gather information on the general situation, including the government's efforts to foster a multi-party democracy.
Algeria's violence began in 1992 when the authorities cancelled a general election in which radical Islamists had taken a commanding lead.
More than 65,000 people have been killed since then, according to Western estimates.