Algiers, 26 June (AKI) - Algerian police killed 19 Islamic militants who rejected a government amnesty aimed at ending years of conflict following a civil war in the 1990s, reports said on Monday. Police reportedly raided on Sunday bases of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which has sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda, in the eastern province of Annaba. The operation followed an upsurge in attacks by Islamic fundamentalists this month which killed 31 people.
Unlike some other Islamic militant groups, the GSPC has refused to give up the armed struggle in exchange for an amnesty offered by president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The amnesty, which came into force in February and will expire next August, gave Islamic militants six months to surrender and get a pardon, provided they were not responsible for massacres, rapes or bombings of public places. Algeria's civil war started in 1992 when authorities canceled a parliamentary election that radical Islamists were poised to win. The conflict cost up to 200,000 lives. |