Algeria's latest wave of violence claimed another nine lives Thursday and Friday, increasing the death toll to more than 320 since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, according to the local press.
Security forces surrounded and killed seven armed Islamic extremists Friday near Chlef, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of Algiers, press reports said Saturday.
The Islamists had abducted an elderly woman and a child in a house but released them unscathed.
On Thursday, an armed Islamist group slit the throat of a police guard in the village of Boulahdjal, 300 kilometers east of Algiers, and a bomb exploded early Friday in a cemetery near Tenes 200 kilometers west of the capital, killing a woman and injuring four others, three of which were children, papers said.
The victims had come to visit graves when they were caught up in the explosion, the same sources added.
More than 100,000 people have died 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)
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