ALGIERS, (Islamweb & News Agencies) -Seventeen people have been killed by an armed group manning a roadblock in Algeria, locals of the Relizane region where the attack took place, police said on Monday.(Read photo caption below)
The victims, all farmworkers, were travelling on small trucks when they drove into the ambush overnight Sunday close to the town of Sidi M'hamed Benaouda, some 300 kilometres southwest of the capital, Algiers.
Some were shot and others were hacked to death. An unspecified number of people, some of them wounded, managed to escape and raise the alarm, locals said.
Elsewhere in the troubled country, gunmen have killed five members of the same family - including four children. Three others were injured in the attack at a home in Ouled-Djillali in eastern Algeria. The four children who died were aged between five and 15. No one has claimed responsibility for the killing but correspondents say it comes in the context of the nine-year political violence pitting the military-backed regime and Islamists who were denied election victory in 1992.
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In one of the bloodiest months in the long-running political violence in Algeria, the number of people killed since the start of July has reached 90. The latest 22 killings are not included.