ISLAMIC militants in Algeria massacred 16 people, mostly women and children, in a village overnight, beheading some of them with axes, villagers said yesterday.
About 50 rebels, split into four groups, attacked Ben Achour village in Blida province, 50 km south of the capital, Algiers, at night and killed 16 people from five families, including old people and a disabled man, they said.
Pro government armed volunteers said the rebels turned on the civilians after fighting a three hour gunbattle with anti rebel militiamen in which more than 10 guerrillas were killed.
The Algerian security forces reported the mass killing in a statement carried by the official Algerian news agency, APS, blaming it on a "group of terrorists" - their term for Islamic guerrillas.
"Many of the victims were beheaded with axes," one villager who had seen the bodies said.
All members of one family were killed with their bodies torn apart when the rebels blew up their house with a bomb, another villager said.
A member of the armed anti rebel volunteer force known as Patriots said the rebels killed the non combatant civilians after they met stiff resistance from the volunteers in Ben Achour.
"More than 10 terrorists were killed in the battle," he said. He did not say if there were casualties among the pro government forces.
Other residents said the battle was heavy and some of the army vehicles sent as reinforcement had been hit and destroyed by the guerrillas.
The residents said most of the adult men in Ben Achour had been armed by the authorities after guerrillas massacred 19 civilians in the village four months ago.
The news of the killings came one day after the Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Ouyahia, said his government had largely quashed the five year old Islamic guerrilla struggle.
Mr Ouyahia classified recent fundamentalist attacks as "desperate acts".
"The more the criminals are incapable of attacking secure localities and infrastructures, the more their barbarous acts are aimed against the civilian population," he said.
Ben Achour village is near Ferme Trap community, where 10 civilians were killed in a rebel raid on December 5th.
The latest killings brought to more than 90 the number of people killed in the past four weeks. More than 80 civilians were killed in November.
The number of killings attributed to fundamentalist movements has risen recently in the run up to Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, which is due to start this week.
In a speech to Algeria's unelected quasi parliament on Saturday, Mr Ouyahia said: "Terrorism is really reduced to a residual level."
Algeria uses the term "terrorism" for actions by the armed fundamentalists who have been fighting to overthrow the government for five years.
About 60,000 people, including many civilians and more than 100 foreigners, have died in the violence.
"The results achieved on the ground allow the government to reiterate that terrorism in Algeria has been defeated," Mr Ouyahia said in his speech to the Transitional National Council.
But one member of the usually tame council underscored concerns about the continuing violence and urged the government to step up the battle against the rebels.
"The measures to fight the scourge (of terrorism) must be radically reviewed in order to end terrorism quickly and effectively," APS yesterday quoted the unnamed council member as asking the government.