A suspected armed Islamist group slit the throats of five young girls and shot a man dead when they attacked a cabaret in the eastern Algerian town of Tebessa, local residents said Saturday.
The killings took place shortly before midnight on Friday when a 20-strong armed group dressed in military fatigues stormed the club, situated 630 kilometers (390 miles) east of the capital Algiers.
After robbing several people of cash and jewelry, the group then kidnapped five young women aged around 20. Their bodies were found dumped in the nearby hills several hours later with their throats slit, the sources said.
A man who tried to flee the attackers was shot dead by other members of the group posted outside the building, they added.
They said a leaflet of an armed Islamist group, the small but hardline Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), was left behind at the scene.
The attack came a week after at least seven Islamic militants were killed in an offensive by the Algerian army in the remote Edough mountains near the town of Annaba, some 600 kilometres east of Algiers.
That army offensive was a retaliation for a GSPC killing of a paramilitary gendarme the previous week.
Nearly 100 people, among them 40 members of Algeria's security apparatus, have been killed by alleged Islamic fundamentalists since the beginning of June, according to a toll compiled from official figures, eyewitness accounts and the media.
Since the beginning of the year, some 1,200 people have died in violence linked to Islamist groups.
Civil war broke out in Algeria in 1992, when the army prevented the now-outlawed fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) from taking power by calling off the second round of general elections that it was poised to win.
The violence since then has claimed more than 100,000 mainly civilian lives.
The main group officially held responsible for much of the slaughter of civilians in the conflict is the Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
Like the GIA, the GSPC -- which is led by Hassan Hattab -- has rejected President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's peace overtures.
According to the terms of a peace deal, all Islamic militants who were not implicated in murders, rapes or bomb attacks in Algeria's civil war were eligible for full or partial amnesty if they surrendered during the six months from July 13, 1999.
But officials said many top GSPC officials were Algerian army deserters, who blocked a surrender of the group due to their exclusion from an amnesty offer – ALGIERS (AFP)
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