Algeria's security services broke a week of silence yesterday with news of three fresh massacres in which 62 villagers were killed. But at the same time President Liamine Zeroual's government continued to balk at Western offers to help find an end to six years of violence blamed on Islamic extremists.
"Enough!" snapped the state-owned El Moudjahid newspaper, which reflects the thinking of President Liamine Zeroual's military-backed regime.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, and his British counterpart, Mr Robin Cook, however agreed yesterday that an EU delegation should visit Algeria.
A German Foreign Ministry spokesman said the ministers had agreed in a telephone conversation that a troika of representatives from Luxembourg, Britain and Austria should visit Algiers as soon as possible.
"Kinkel and Cook agreed a troika mission was necessary," he said.
Representatives from the EU's 15 foreign ministries are due to meet in Brussels on Thursday to decide on a joint course of action. The German spokesman said the foreign ministers hoped the meeting would accept the proposal to offer humanitarian aid to Algeria and advice on combating terrorism.
"It should be a fact-finding mission and will not set out to make any decisions itself," he said, adding that the EU fully recognised the problem as an internal one and that it had no intention of interfering.
"The mission would try to see what the EU can do for survivors of the massacres and relatives of the victims," he said. It would also express the Union's concern over the killings.
In separate communiques in Algiers, the security forces said 62 people had been killed and 48 wounded overnight on Monday in three massacres in the Relizane region, 250 kilometres southwest of Algiers.
That is the same area where, according to Algiers press reports, up to 412 people were killed in attacks on four villages on December 30th, the eve of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
In a first communique, the security services said 29 villagers were killed and 27 wounded, 12 seriously, at Sidi Mammar, in the Ouarsenis mountains of the Relizane region.
In a second statement, issued minutes later, the security services said 12 people were killed, and a similar number wounded, in an attack on another hamlet, Ouled Bounif.
Then came the announcement of the third attack, in which 21 were killed and nine wounded.
It was the first official announcement of violent deaths since Wednesday last week, when the security services said 78 people had died in a December 30th attack in the Souk el-Had part of the Relizane. Press reports in Algiers gave much higher tolls for that incident, with most saying that about 350 had been killed. One newspaper, Liberte, put the toll as high as 412.
Since then, Algerian newspapers have continued to report other, unconfirmed massacres, many in isolated villages in the western part of Algeria.
In Brussels yesterday, EU Commissioners "very firmly" condemned the atrocities, but held out hope that the Algerian authorities would "show themselves open" to offers of help from abroad, Mr Nikolaus van der Pas, spokesman for the Commission President, Mr Jacques Santer, said.
El Moudjahid, however, said foreigners would be better off "seriously looking at the terrorists whom they are sheltering and protecting on their own soil in the name of asylum and human rights".
The Algerian government has already rejected a US proposal for an international commission of inquiry, as well as French comments on the continuing unrest.
In Paris, President Jacques Chirac said France, the former colonial power in Algeria, was greatly moved by the recent slaughter of civilians and wanted to send help.
"I want to express before you the deep emotion that all French people feel in the face of these massacres of innocent people," the President told a gathering of senior French politicians and foreign diplomats. "During this ordeal, France feels solidarity with Algeria and hopes to provide it with aid and co-operation," he added.