Algeria violence death toll more than doubles

Algiers, Aug 2: The death toll from clashes between Islamist rebels and government forces in Algeria more than doubled in July as the army attacked al Qaeda hideouts, according to sources count based on newspaper reports.

Fifty-eight people 47 rebels and 11 soldiers were killed in July, up from 25 in June, bringing to 265 the number of people killed in 2007.

The army and security forces moved in on strongholds of the al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, mainly in the troubled Kabylie region east of Algiers, after rebel attacks that included a suicide truck bomb inside a barracks on July 11.

That attack by the group, previously known as the Salafist Group for Combat and Preaching (GSPC), killed eight soldiers.

Algeria is emerging from more than a decade of conflict that began when the military-backed government scrapped 1992 legislative elections a radical Islamic party was poised to win.

Authorities had feared an Iranian style revolution. Up to 200,000 people have been killed during the ensuing violence.

The bloodshed has subsided sharply in recent years and last year the government freed more than 2,000 former Islamist guerrillas under an amnesty designed to put an end to the conflict.

Reuters>