Suspected Islamic rebels have killed 23 civilians in western Algeria hours before a parliamentary election began on Thursday in the North African country, the official Algerian news agency APS said.
The victims were all nomad people killed overnight in Sendjas village in Chlef province, 112 miles west of Algiers, APS reported, quoting a government security source.
The bodies of three of the murdered nomads were set ablaze, said APS, without giving further details. The massacre was the latest in a series of killings of civilians and members of government forces in the past few weeks.
The poll is the second legislative election since a bloody uprising flared after the cancellation of a parliamentary poll in 1992 in which radical Islamists had taken a commanding lead.
(China Daily May 31, 2002)
