Christians Under Attack

The killings outside Medea — a haunt for insurgents in the 1990s but now generally calm — raises concern that the violence that once plagued the region could be on the return.

Five youths gathering chestnuts Friday in the Layoune forest, 10 kilometers (six miles) south of Medea, were attacked Kalashnikov rifle fire, the ministry said. Two were killed on the spot and a third body was found Saturday, the statement said. Two other youths escaped.

The ages of the victims were not made available, nor was it known if they were boys or girls.

Soldiers backed by local communal guards, who are citizens armed by authorities, were searching the area for the attackers, the statement said.

Sweeps by security forces and infighting within the Armed Islamic Group, or GIA, annihilated the movement. The Salafist Group for Call and Combat, a dissident group opposed to the GIA's extreme methods, emerged. However, it formally affiliated itself with the al-Qaida terror network over the past year, changing its name to al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa and using tactics like suicide bombings linked to the global terror network.

Two suicide bombers attacked U.N. offices and Algeria's Constitutional Council in Algiers on Dec. 11, killing at least 37 people, 17 of them U.N. employees.

The emergence of an al-Qaida affiliate adds a new, dangerous dimension to the insurgency, which was triggered by an army decision

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