MUSLIM fundamentalists killed 28 people in an isolated village early yesterday. Hours later a bomb ripped apart a cafe in an Algiers working class suburb wounding 53 people, hospital sources and witnesses said.
In the latest slaughter in the vast North African country, security forces said the 28 people were killed in the village of Dhamnia, 75 miles south west of Algiers.
The overnight raid was the fifth mass killing this month. The authorities say 82 people have died, many with their throats slit. November was a month marked by even more bloodshed, termed by one Algerian paper "The Month, of all Horrors".
News of the killings coincided with that of the bomb attack in the Algerian capital, where hospital sources and witnesses said 53 people had been wounded. The official toll by the security forces was 20 wounded.
Algeria's unelected quasi parliament, in an attempt to tighten control of weapons, passed a law yesterday on "materials of war, arms and ammunition".
It gives the Defence Ministry control of the "manufacture, import and export of weapons of war", which range from military weapons to knives. Anyone usurping that function faces life imprisonment.
It also tightens the categories of those who may carry arms. Second time offenders on weapons, including hunting rifles, can face the death penalty.
About 60,000 people have been killed since violence erupted in January 1992 after the authorities cancelled a general election in which the Muslim fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front had taken an overwhelming first round lead.
The use of knives to kill civilians has become common, spreading even deeper horror among Algerians. "Such atrocities have created an atmosphere of terror where people fear not just being killed, but being killed in these particularly brutal ways," Amnesty International has said.
Thousands of people have fled villages in fear to take refuge in towns since their communities became targets of mass killings in darkness.