ALGIERS, 23 August 2005 — Ten armed extremists were killed in a large-scale military operation launched last week against insurgent groups in regions west and south of the capital Algiers, yesterday’s Algerian press reported. Security forces captured two Islamist fighters and destroyed a bunker that served as a base for their group, in operations launched Thursday in the Ain Defla and Medea areas, respectively, 160 kilometers west and 70 kilometers south of Algiers.
Using heavy artillery and helicopters, the army swooped on woodlands Djebel Louh near Ain Defla, a mountainous area hard to access and used as a base by Islamist fighters in the area. Only one Islamic group remains active in Algeria, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which is thought to have ties to Al-Qaeda. It has refused all dialogue and reconciliation with the government.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika vowed on Saturday to step up the fight against armed extremists and stop the militants from reigniting their campaign in Algeria. His comments came after a new wave of deadly attacks blamed on militants, which have claimed 33 lives since the start of the month, according to official and press figures.
Late Friday, six people had their throats slit by extremist rebels, who set up a false roadblock to the east of Algiers. Violence blamed on militants has claimed 150,000 lives in Algeria since 1992, according to official figures. Bouteflika has unveiled a national peace and reconciliation plan that will be put to a referendum on Sept. 29. The draft would ban the “exploitation” of Islam for political purposes, while providing for legal proceedings to be dropped against those rebels who surrendered to the authorities after Jan. 13, 2000.
Meanwhile, Bouteflika has sent a message to King Mohammed of Morocco expressing his determination to develop “fraternal and privileged relations” between the two north African countries, the Moroccan press agency MAP said Saturday. At the same time, Morocco welcomed calls for the “relaunching” of a dialogue with Algeria following the release of the last of some 2,000 Moroccan prisoners of war held by the separatist Polisario regime of Western Sahara.
The Aug. 18 release of 404 Moroccan prisoners of war from a Polisario base in southern Algeria — some held for two decades — spurred calls for renewed efforts to resolve the 30-year-old conflict in the Western Sahara.
US Sen. Richard Lugar, who supervised the prisoners’ liberation, applauded the Algerian-Moroccan rapprochement and asked the two countries to continue work toward “a peaceful political solution to the question of the Western Sahara.” Morocco and Algeria are both members of the Maghreb Arab Union linking the countries of North Africa but the five-member organization is defunct because of the dispute between the two nations over Western Sahara.
