An armed group machine-gunned a bus killing 11 passengers and wounding 10 late on Tuesday at Medea, 80km south of Algiers, residents of the town said.
Reached by phone from Algiers, they said the bus came under attack from Islamists in Takbou, a suburb of Medea.
Elements of the feared Armed Islamic Group (GIA) operate in this region.
On Sunday night two people were killed and one was wounded at a checkpoint set up by an armed group who opened fire on a truck and a taxi near Larbaa, 20km south of the Algerian capital.
The Larbaa district is also a stronghold of the GIA.
The new head of the group, Rachid Abou Tourab, who succeeded Antar Zouabri, killed on February 8 by security forces at Boufarik 35km south of Algiers, has pledged to continue his predecessor’s hard line until an Islamic state is set up in Algeria.
”Neither truce nor dialogue nor reconciliation nor security, but blood, blood, destruction, destruction,” he promised in a leaflet.
”We shall continue to destroy their harvests, to take their goods, to rape their women, to decapitate them in the towns, the villages and the deserts,” went on the new leader, saying his men would continue to ”kill and cut throats without any respite.”
Since the start of the month more than 30 people have died in violence in Algeria, according to official tolls and press reports.
More than 640 have been killed since the beginning of the year.
Algeria’s decade-long Islamic extremist insurgency has claimed some 150 000 mostly civilian lives, according to the press and political parties.
The attacks have been blamed on the GIA and Hassan Hattab’s Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), two hardline extremist groups that want Algeria to become an Islamic state and have rejected attempts at reconciliation by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. – Sapa-AFP