SEVENTEEN people have been killed by an armed group manning a roadblock in Algeria, locals in the Relizane region where the attack took place said on Monday. The victims, all farmworkers, were travelling on small trucks when they drove into the ambush overnight on Sunday close to the town of Sidi M’hamed Benaouda, some 300 kilometres southwest of the capital Algiers. Some were shot and others were hacked to death. An unspecified number of people, some of them wounded, managed to escape and raise the alarm, locals said. The latest deaths bring to at least 38 the number of people killed this month in attacks, almost all blamed on Islamic militants, according to an unofficial toll compiled from press reports. -AFP