Posted on 01/05/2003 5:04:05 PM PST by blam
Algerian Islamists kill 56 in raids on army and families
By Aomar Ouali in Algiers
06 January 2003
Islamic militants ambushed a military convoy in north-east Algeria and attacked families near the capital, Algiers, in a weekend of killings that claimed at least 56 lives, Algerian media reported yesterday.
The ambush on Saturday night killed 43 soldiers and seriously wounded 19 others, the deadliest assault suffered by the Algerian military in at least five years.
In the other attack, Islamic militants killed 13 people from two families overnight on Saturday in Zabana, 30 miles south of Algiers, the official news agency APS reported, citing security services. It attributed the attack to the Armed Islamic Group, the north African country's most radical insurgent group. The killings dealt a blow to claims by Algeria's military-backed government that it was winning its decade-old battle against Islamic extremists.
The military convoy was ambushed in the village of Theniet al-Abed, about 200 miles south-east of Algiers, the newspaper Le Matin reported.
The mountainous region is a known stronghold of the Islamic extremist Salafist Group for Call and Combat, or GSPC. The GSPC is on a United States blacklist of terrorist organisations and reportedly has links with Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida terror network.
The attackers apparently had advance knowledge of the convoy's arrival and detonated devices made from bottles of explosive acetylene gas, which is commonly used in metal welding.
The wounded were treated in hospitals in the nearby towns of Biskra and Batna. The dead were soldiers or members of Algeria's civilian defence force, Le Matin said, citing hospital officials. But military authorities in Batna and hospital officials refused yesterday to comment on the report.
The attack was the most damaging on the military since at least February 1998, when 28 soldiers were killed in an ambush in Boghni in the restive Kabyle region, 80 miles east of Algiers.
More than 120,000 people have been killed in more than a decade of civil strife in Algeria, where Islamic militants have been staging massacres since they were shut of out parliamentary elections in 1992. Last year some 1,100 civilians, militants and security forces were killed in violence linked to the insurgency, roughly the same number as in 2001. (AP)
'And families' kind of puts it all into perspective IMO. Sen. Murray, are you paying attention?
I read where Islam is a peaceful religion.
Yup. I'm suprised they didn't call them 'rebels.'
BTW, I am not joking about babies in ovens, or children thrown alive down wells, or many other manifestations of pure evil conducted by the "pure islamists" in Algeria in the last decade. They are using terror as their daily instrument, and babies left in ovens with the rest of the family raped, decapitated etc is great for shock value when the relatives return to the village. What's the topper to 100 men women and children decaptitated? How about an infant cooked in the bread oven? They do it, and they justify it, as they justify ANYTHING which will lead to their vision of a "pure islamic state."
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