The death toll from political violence in Algeria more than doubled to 45 in March from February as the army stepped up attacks on Islamist insurgents, according to a Reuters count based on newspaper reports.
The increase in casualties stems from a military push in the Kabylie region east of the capital in which helicopter gunships, armoured vehicles and thousands of troops were deployed against rebels holed up in mountains and forests, the newspapers said.
Of the 45 dead, 33 were rebels, 11 were soldiers and one was a foreigner, a Russian, the newspapers reported.
The toll compares with 18 dead in February and 21 dead in January, bringing to 84 the number of people killed in political conflict in the first quarter of the year, according to the newspapers which have correspondents in the Kabylie region.
No comparative figures were available for the same period last year.
The Russian was killed on March 3 in a bomb attack on a bus carrying workers for a Russian gas pipeline construction firm.
The attack was claimed by the al-Qaeda Organisation of the Islamic Maghreb, a group of Algerian Islamist rebels formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) who adopted the new name in January to deepen ties to al-Qaeda.
Founded in 1998, the GSPC began as an offshoot of another armed group that was waging an armed revolt against the government to establish an Islamic state.
The GSPC shared the overall aims of that revolt, which began in 1992 after the then military-backed authorities, fearing an Iran-style revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election that an Islamist political party was set to win.
Up to 200 000 people have been killed in the ensuing bloodshed.
The violence has subsided sharply since the 1990s but rebels in recent months have stepped up bomb attacks on security forces and on foreign targets. – Reuters