At Least 120 Slain in Latest Algerian Massacre
January 13, 1998 - 0:0
SIDI HAMED, Algeria At least 120 people were slain overnight and dozens of others wounded in this village south of the capital Algiers, witnesses told AFP at the scene Monday. People were shot or knifed, they added. At 9:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) Monday bodies and body parts were still being pulled from houses gutted by fire and their walls often stained by blood.
The newspaper Le Matin reported that at least 50 people were slain overnight and many more wounded in this latest carnage in Algeria. Citing a preliminary toll by hospital officials, the paper said the assailants used sabres and axes to kill their victims in the village, located 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Algiers. The daily Liberte said dozens of families were wiped out during the attack, which it described as the biggest such massacre so near the capital since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramazan on December 30.
No official death toll was available and security forces were said to have launched a sweep at the site of the massacre. The capital's Zmirli and Mustapha hospitals were reportedly swamped with wounded people overnight and doctors were called in to handle the emergency. About 30 of the wounded, mostly children, adolescents and women, were operated on at the Mustapha Hospital, an AFP correspondent who went to the hospital said.
Two of the wounded died there overnight from their injuries. Newspapers gave varying reports of the circumstances surrounding the killings. Liberte said villagers had gathered at a movie theater at the end of the fasting day Sunday when a man threw a homemade bomb that provoked panic. They wanted to get the crowd out on the street to be able to wipe them out better, the paper said.
And then the carnage started with no-one spared, not even women, children or the elderly. A reporter at Liberte who saw some of the victims being hospitalized said one of them, identified as Mustapha, had nothing on his back but a bloody shirt in tatters and one eye dangling down on his disfigured face. The newspaper La Tribune said the massacre took place after a bomb exploded at a mosque at the end of the evening prayer with the assailants butchering victims as they tried to flee.
It said about 30 dead had been taken to the morgue at the Zmirli hospital where several of the wounded died. The hospital, which was sealed off by government soldiers, was teeming with ambulances early Monday. At the Mustapha Hospital, a 12-year-old boy, Hamid, was suffering from a gunshot in the heel of his foot. His face was also bloated, as he told AFP that he was at a video store watching a film Sunday evening with other residents after the sundown break in Ramazan fasting when men stormed in and began shooting after throwing a bomb.
(AFP)
The newspaper Le Matin reported that at least 50 people were slain overnight and many more wounded in this latest carnage in Algeria. Citing a preliminary toll by hospital officials, the paper said the assailants used sabres and axes to kill their victims in the village, located 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Algiers. The daily Liberte said dozens of families were wiped out during the attack, which it described as the biggest such massacre so near the capital since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramazan on December 30.
No official death toll was available and security forces were said to have launched a sweep at the site of the massacre. The capital's Zmirli and Mustapha hospitals were reportedly swamped with wounded people overnight and doctors were called in to handle the emergency. About 30 of the wounded, mostly children, adolescents and women, were operated on at the Mustapha Hospital, an AFP correspondent who went to the hospital said.
Two of the wounded died there overnight from their injuries. Newspapers gave varying reports of the circumstances surrounding the killings. Liberte said villagers had gathered at a movie theater at the end of the fasting day Sunday when a man threw a homemade bomb that provoked panic. They wanted to get the crowd out on the street to be able to wipe them out better, the paper said.
And then the carnage started with no-one spared, not even women, children or the elderly. A reporter at Liberte who saw some of the victims being hospitalized said one of them, identified as Mustapha, had nothing on his back but a bloody shirt in tatters and one eye dangling down on his disfigured face. The newspaper La Tribune said the massacre took place after a bomb exploded at a mosque at the end of the evening prayer with the assailants butchering victims as they tried to flee.
It said about 30 dead had been taken to the morgue at the Zmirli hospital where several of the wounded died. The hospital, which was sealed off by government soldiers, was teeming with ambulances early Monday. At the Mustapha Hospital, a 12-year-old boy, Hamid, was suffering from a gunshot in the heel of his foot. His face was also bloated, as he told AFP that he was at a video store watching a film Sunday evening with other residents after the sundown break in Ramazan fasting when men stormed in and began shooting after throwing a bomb.
(AFP)