Four Algerian communal guards and three civilians have been killed in attacks by suspected Islamic extremists, press reports said in Algiers on Sunday.
All of the victims died late Friday or early Saturday, newspapers reported.
Three of the guards died in an attack on their camp near Medea, south of the capital, while three others were injured, said the Algerian daily Le Jeune Independant.
The fourth guard was killed, and another injured, in the nearby village of Tablat.
Meanwhile, a young man was killed near Djelfa, about 300 kilometers (190 miles) south of Algiers, by an armed group which kidnapped a 10-year-old girl and mutilated the exhumed body of a recently-buried man, the daily Es Sahafa reported.
Near Skikda, 600 km east of Algiers, another young man was shot at point-blank range with an assault rifle in a cafe, several papers said.
The son of a "patriot," or civilian armed by the state, also died late Friday when attackers slit his throat after stopping him at a roadblock in the Constantine region east of Algiers.
Insurgency by fundamentalist groups has claimed at least 100,000 lives since they took up arms in 1992 after the army called off the second round of elections the Islamic Salvation Front was poised to win.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in July 1999 offered a six-month amnesty on specific conditions to armed groups, which led hundreds of fighters to turn themselves in.
He has ordered the security forces to crack down mercilessly on those who failed to take up the offer – ALGIERS (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
