Villagers decapitated and set alight in massacre by Algerian Islamists

ALGERIAN newspapers have reported one of the most gruesome massacres in the country's five year civil war with some of the victims decapitated by guerrillas using a chainsaw.

More than 80 civilians, including women and children, were slaughtered over the Muslim weekend on Thursday and Friday at least 10 had their throats cut before being decapitated with a chainsaw. Others were doused with petrol and set alight as they tried to escape.

Fundamentalist guerrillas embarked on a two month campaign of almost nightly killings in isolated villages last October to show their displeasure at the holding of a constitutional referendum.

President Liamine Zeroual's government has called a parliamentary election for June 5th, and the most recent murders are being interpreted as the beginning of another grisly anti election campaign.

"Every time the government schedules an important political event the violence increases," an Algerian journalist told The Irish Times over the telephone from Algiers. "We're in for a very hard two months."

The Algerian newspaper Liberte sent a reporter to the village of Amroussa, 50 km south of Algiers, to investigate the killing of up to 17 people there on Friday.

Witnesses said three children under the age of three and seven women had their throats cut before they were beheaded with a chainsaw. Their homes were then burned down. Those who tried to flee the attackers in Amroussa were doused with petrol and burned to death, the same witnesses said.

The Amroussa raid was led by Antar Zouabri, the leader of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the most extreme of several Islamist movements fighting to overthrow the Algerian government.

Fifty two civilians were murdered at Thalit, a tiny village 80 km south of Algiers on Thursday night when a band of 35 guerrillas armed with axes, daggers and swords surrounded the settlement. As they closed in on its few houses, they ordered residents out, then cut their throats.

Similar massacres took place at Harbil and Sidi Naamane, southeast of Algiers. Four members of one family had their throats cut near Moretti, 40 km west of Algiers, and an undetermined number of motorists were shot dead at a roadblock near Beni Slimane, 60 km south east of Algiers.

Up to 100,000 people are believed to have died in Algeria's civil war. The weekend massacres followed a government assault on guerrillas in the mountainous region of Tizi Ouzou which reportedly left 100 rebels dead.

Despite the use of helicopter gunships and bombers, government forces have been unable to secure the countryside, where marauding guerrilla bands terrorise the population.

The government has maintained a semblance of normality in Algiers and other large cities. News of the massacres scarcely upsets people in the capital: "People don't pay much attention any more," a resident said. "Indifference is taking over there's no longer the same degree of emotion."