koranic mass murderers at it again:
Suspected Algerian Islamic rebels kill 14
Reuters UPDATE
Tuesday May 27, 9:48 am ET
By Hamid Ould Ahmed
(Adds details, background, clarifies attack on two families)
ALGIERS, May 27 (Reuters) - Suspected Islamic rebels killed 14 members of two families in western Algeria on Monday, including two children whose throats they slit, authorities said on Tuesday.
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The families were killed when their homes were attacked on Monday night in Tadjna in the western province of Chlef, some 200 km (125 miles) west of the capital Algiers. Seven people were killed in the same area a day earlier.
Hospital sources said earlier that the 14 victims belonged to a single family.
State radio said government troops were searching the Mediterranean region for the killers. The hardline Armed Islamic Group (GIA) is known to operate in the Chlef region and has in the past staged attacks there.
Between 100,000 and 150,000 Algerians have been killed in the brutal violence that erupted in 1992 after the government cancelled elections that fundamentalist Islamists were poised to win.
"They (rebels) slit the throats of the youngest members of the two families -- a two-year-old boy and a four-year-old boy," said an official from the civil protection authority. "We intervened at 3:05 a.m. to evacuate the victims," the official said. A 17-year-old girl was wounded when she fled the attack.
Guerrillas have been known to shoot men but to attack women and children with knives to save ammunition, according to security specialists.
On Sunday 10 suspected rebels slit the throats of a woman and her two children and then shot dead four students and wounded a fifth at an Islamic school in the Chlef region, neighbours and state radio said.
The GIA and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) are fighting to create a purist Islamic state.
Algeria's armed forces stormed a GSPC desert hideout earlier this month, freeing 17 European tourists held hostage for more than two months. A second group of 15 tourists remain captive in the Sahara desert, their fate unknown.
The government offered the rebels an amnesty in 1999, and guerrilla-linked violence has fallen sharply in recent years, bringing back foreign investment and some tourism.
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