The European Union agreed yesterday to send a diplomatic mission to Algeria to discuss the wave of massacres there, and senior officials were reported to be ready to go as soon as Algiers gave the word.
The initiative was seen as the first step in a delicate process of dialogue between Algerian authorities, who adamantly reject foreign interference in the six-year-old conflict, and western powers appalled by its mounting brutality.
Political directors of the 15 EU foreign ministries, meeting in Brussels, said the mission would listen to the Algerian authorities, discuss the killings and see what help Europe might have to offer the Algerian people.
The urgency of the EU mission was underscored by the latest massacre, at the village of Sidi Hamed, just 30 km from Algiers at the weekend.
Government security forces said 103 people had been killed and 70 wounded in a two-hour bloodbath, and they again blamed Islamic terrorists for the killings. Algeria strongly denied national newspaper reports that the death toll was over 400, which would make it one of the worst massacres in the conflict.
The EU troika will comprise senior officials from the present, past and future EU presidency holders - Britain, Luxembourg and Austria. Meanwhile, survivors and relatives yesterday buried the latest massacre victims.
The Sidi Hamed cemetery had to be extended to accommodate the graves. "Yesterday we had rivers of blood, today we have rivers of tears," said a survivor. Some 65 victims had already been buried and 40 to 50 more graves were being prepared. No survivor interviewed by Reuters gave a death toll significantly higher than that of the authorities.
Villagers said 30 girls had also disappeared after the attack, a familiar pattern. The girls, sometimes as young as 12, are taken for sex and later killed, usually by having their throats cut.
"They slaughtered them with knives like sheep, just like sheep, despite the cries of the children," a weeping survivor said as she told about the killing of a neighbour, his wife and five children. "The killers were calm, did not have any expressions on their faces. May God curse them."
Dried pools of blood, and clothes and shoes were scattered everywhere. Survivors, still visibly shaken, said about 70 gunmen, dressed in military fatigues similar to those of the government-backed militia and armed with AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, bombs and knives attacked the village.
Yesterday's newspapers listed a series of other killings. Liberte said that at Bouchaoui, on the western outskirts of Algiers, three Muslim rebels who had tried to kill an old man with an axe were shot dead. Also in west Algiers, two men shot dead one man and wounded four people in a cafe.
El Watan said about 30 terrorists had killed 10 civilians in the western province of Tlemcen on Sunday night. "One of the killers, named El Hania, started by killing his own brother to set an example."