WEDNESDAY, 4.30PM
The armed wing of the banned Islamic Salvation Front on Wednesday announced a ceasefire in Algeria effective as of Wednesday next week.
The statement from the Islamic Salvation Army, dated September 21, was signed by its national leader Madani Mezerag. The ceasefire call comes two days after up to 200 people were slaughtered in an Algiers suburb in one of the worst massacres since Islamic insurgents declared war on the military government after election results were anulled in 1992.
The hardline group blamed for most of the violence of recent years is called the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA. “The national emir of the Islamic Salvation Army orders all chiefs of fighting companies under his command to halt combat operations as of October 1 1997 and calls for all other groups committed to the religious and national interests to join this appeal so that the enemy hiding behind abominable massacres can be unveiled, as well as the GIA criminals and those hiding behind it,” the statement read.
It was dated before armed men reportedly butchered and burned scores of people, mostly women and children, overnight on Monday in the latest of a series of horrific massacres, and denounced “abominable carnage rarely seen in modern human history which recalls the terrible events which our people lived through before independence.” It also called on Algerians to stand united, saying “the situation is dangerous and the conspiration huge.”