Throat-slitting and decapitation had become routine, so the "Islamist" rebels who have tried since 1992 to overthrow the Algerian regime are inventing new horrors. Guerrillas now cut open the chests of victims, according to witnesses who fled, and eat their hearts in front of villagers. An escapee from a recent massacre has told how, when a mother nursing her infant pleaded for mercy, the gunman grabbed the baby from her and threw it into a pan of boiling liquid.
In his main policy address to the new national assembly last weekend, the Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Ouyahia, reiterated the government's contention that it was fighting "residual terrorism" which would soon be "eradicated".
Yet more than 100 civilians are now often massacred in a single night and 100,000 people are believed to have been killed since the war started.
Rape and the kidnapping of women, who are held by the roving bands as sex slaves, have become common practice.
In their night-time raids, the rebels use flashlights to inspect adolescent women before deciding whether to rape them or slit their throats, according to an Algerian human rights lawyer.
Algiers newspapers provide macabre reading. The murders of 28 people were detailed in yesterday's Liberte, while El Watan published an interview with a 17-year-old girl who had hidden while her entire family were shot and stabbed to death.
For three consecutive nights, the guerrillas had come to the outskirts of her village of Amroussa and howled like wolves. Her maternal uncle was among the killers.
A man who recently returned to Algiers after a long absence was appalled by the changed mentality. "The person I'd entrusted my house to sold it while I was away. My friends said, `You have to have him killed; have his throat slit.' That's when I realised what the violence is doing to people's minds."
He was as horrified by his friends' advice as he was by the casual way in which they recount atrocities. "They say, `over there, that's where we found the two heads', or `here, this is where they slit the throats of the football fans'. It seems to preserve their sanity to consider these things ordinary."
The football fans he alluded to were killed earlier this summer, on the night of the USMA team's Algeria Cup victory. Young men were driving through Algiers, waving the team's flag and cheering. They were stopped at a faux barrage (fake checkpoint) manned by fundamentalists, and three of the football fans had their throats slit.
"How dare you celebrate," the killers reportedly asked, "when we are fighting a djihad [holy war]?"
Fear keeps most Algerians at home in the evening, but some rash souls venture out to parties or weddings. Leila, a dentist, is among them.
"We always go in groups of three or four cars," she explained on the telephone. "That way, if we hit a faux barrage, only the people in the first car will get killed. It's like Russian roulette."
Djamila's small son begs her every day to take him to the beach. "I keep promising we'll go on Friday, but I've been too frightened since I heard about the summer camp at Tipaza."
Two weeks ago, 20 school children were massacred on the seaside near the Roman ruins at Tipaza. The government has hushed up the story, but The Irish Times was able to confirm it independently.
Exorbitant food prices and a severe drought compound the suffering of the population. Leila has installed a large water tank in the courtyard outside her apartment in central Algiers, where there is running water only one day in three. Djamila's husband carries jerry-cans to the mosque to fill them with water from the fountain.
The regime promised that the "democratic process" it began with presidential elections in 1995 would bring peace. Algeria has since held two other nationwide polls and local elections are to be held in October. But the process, ever vulnerable to fraud, seems to have little bearing on the course of the war.
"Elections may provide the government with a semblance of legitimacy," a prominent Algiers lawyer says, "but they can't correct injustice or cure popular discontent."
The liberation of two leading Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) sheikhs last month has had no effect, nor has the alleged killing by security forces of Antar Zouabri, the chief of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which is widely believed to be responsible for the massacres.
Despite severe repression which includes artillery and aerial bombardments and the systematic torture of prisoners - including, some say, of Zouabri - the government cannot protect its citizens. Zouabri's death is the subject of much speculation. The GIA claim he is alive, while the government, as is its custom, has maintained total silence.
The Algiers lawyer criticises the freed Islamist sheikhs for failing to condemn the violence and the regime for its ineptitude.
"The government tries to manage the security situation, but it has no political sense whatsoever. One day we read in the newspapers that Sheikh Abassi Madani [the leader of the FIS] has been freed. Point, that's it.
"The government has nothing to offer young people. They have no prospect of jobs, marriage or housing, so they throw themselves into the fighting, because it's adventure. They know death lies at the end of it, but they don't care."
The west watches helplessly as the slaughter continues - but the war has not prevented the US and others from investing in Algerian gas and oil fields, which are well protected and far from inhabited areas.
Attempts to mediate, most notably by the Vatican in 1995, have met with vehement government opposition.
As consumers of Algerian natural gas, as the destination for Algerian refugees and as the victims of GIA attacks, France and the European Union are directly concerned by the conflict. They tend to regard the government as the lesser of evils, but open support invites criticism from human rights groups and retaliation by the GIA.
A long-negotiated agreement of association between the EU and Algiers has stalled on the human rights issue.