Ten people, including six members of the security forces, were killed and three others injured in fresh violence in Algeria, press reports said Saturday.
A group of 30 armed Islamists ambushed and killed three guards Friday near Ain Defla, 160 kilometers (95 miles) west of Algiers, daily El Watan said.
Three civilian guards were killed by armed Islamists Thursday: one near Skikda, 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of Algiers and two in Tifelfel near Batna, 450 kilometres (270 miles) east of the capital.
El Watan said that in Tifelfel, the attackers forced all the villagers into a mosque and harangued them, before killing the two guards. They made off with the mosque's prayer mats and villagers' food supplies, the report added.
Armed attackers killed a civilian Thursday at Medea, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the capital, the reports said.
Security forces on Thursday killed two armed Islamists at El Hamdania, near Medea and another at Medjahdia, 200 kilometers (120 miles) west of Algiers.
Three people were injured, one of them seriously, when a bomb went off Friday in a farm near Saida, 430 kilometers (260 miles) west of Algiers, Le Quotidien d'Oran said.
The civil war in Algeria, which broke out in 1992 after the military stepped in to deny certain electoral victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), has claimed more than 100,000 lives.
Since the beginning of November, around 50 people have been killed in Islamic-linked violence, according to a tally made from press reports -- ALGER (AFP)
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