Seven people, including a soldier, have been killed in fresh violence linked to Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria, press reports said Sunday.
Armed Islamists on Friday cut the throat of one soldier and severely injured another at a fake roadblock set up near Bouira, 120 kilometers (70 miles) east of the capital, the reports said.
A woman was killed when an armed group threw a bomb into her house near Berrouaghia, in the Medea region, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Algiers.
Government security forces on Saturday killed four Islamic fighters in the Msila region, 250 kilometers (150 miles) southeast of Algiers. Another Islamist was killed by police on Friday.
Press reports on Saturday said 10 people, including six members of the security forces, had been killed in separate incidents on Thursday and Friday.
Since the beginning of November, around 50 people have been killed in Islamic-linked violence, according to a tally made from press reports.
The civil war in Algeria, which broke out in 1992 after the military stepped in to deny certain electoral victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), has claimed more than 100,000 lives.
The violence has continued unabated since the end earlier this year of a conditional amnesty offered by the government to extremist groups.
The hardline GIA and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) both rejected the deal.
The jailed former deputy leader of the FIS has meanwhile said he is ready to call on the two groups to lay down their arms, the daily L'Expression reported Sunday.
Ali Belhadj recently wrote a letter to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika in which he said he would tell the fighters to disarm if he was released, the paper said.
Belhadj had until now fiercely rejected the government's reconciliation deal -- ALGIERS (AFP)
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