Three people, including an army officer, were killed and two others injured in renewed bloodletting in Algeria, press reports said Tuesday.
An army lieutenant was killed and a captain wounded Monday after a bomb went off in Maala, near Lakhdaria, some 70 kilometers (50 miles) east of Algiers.
The bomb was planted by members of an unidentified armed group, newspapers said.
The two officers had been dispatched to the area to provide security for victims of another bomb explosion that killed an employee of a local electricity facility.
Meanwhile, a villager who had been abducted by an armed group was found dead Sunday in the region of Ain Defla, some 160 kilometers (100 miles), the papers reported.
Elsewhere, in Sidi Ahmed, some 430 kilometers (260 miles) southwest of Algiers, a woman was injured by gunfire Sunday at a false checkpoint, where three men were kidnapped by gunmen.
The killings came after reports Monday that armed Islamic extremists killed a man and four children in an overnight attack on a town south of Algiers.
Another person was seriously wounded in the attack, carried out in Djelfa, some 270 kilometers (170 miles) south of the capital, officials said, blaming the incident on a "terrorist group".
The children were all aged between six and 11.
More than 100,000 people have died in Algeria since Islamic militants took up arms in 1992 after the army called off the second round of elections the Islamic Salvation Front was poised to win -- ALGIERS (AFP)
