On this date, September 6th, in 1997, 87 people were killed in the Beni-Messous massacre during the Algerian civil war.

The NY Times described the massacre:

At least 85 people were killed early today and 67 wounded in another brutal, unexplained attack on the outskirts of Algiers that spread panic through the capital.

When the media describe an attack as brutal and unexplained, one can usually safely infer that Islam is somehow involved, although the media will never admit such a fact for fear of being labeled "Islamophobic".

It was the second-worst massacre reported in the six years of undeclared war in Algeria that began when the army canceled an election in 1991 that seemed certain to bring the Islamic Salvation Front to power. Only the killing on Aug. 29 of at least 98 people in Reis, just south of Algiers, took a heavier official toll.

Government reports of the numbers of dead in the massacres today and last month were below estimates given by some survivors. These ranged as high as 200 today and more than 300 for the killings in Reis. But casualty figures in the Algerian conflict, which has left tens of thousands dead since 1992, are often as murky as the identities of the killers.

The Times won't tell you, but I will.  According to the CIA, Algeria is 99% Sunni Muslim.  200,000 people have died in the Algerian civil war since 1991, and the war continues to this day.  This is Sunni-on-Sunni violence;  whether motivated by tribal affiliation, recent immigration, or intra-Sunni sect-ual schisms is as yet unclear.  

The splintering of Islamic movements in Algeria, the paucity of official information, the reluctance of authorities to grant visas to foreign journalists and fragmentary evidence that the army or groups linked to it have sometimes encouraged violence for their own ends have contributed to making the Algerian conflict one of the murkiest of wars.

'Eighty-five people have been assassinated in a cowardly way and 67 wounded,' the Government statement said today. In Algerian official parlance, the phrase 'in a cowardly way' refers to the slitting of throats. State television showed charred houses and floors awash with blood.

African and Arab media are just as reliant on an unintelligible jumble of euphemisms as Western media.  International media are worried about appearing "racist", while local African and Arab media don't want to air dirty laundry in front of the kufirs.

Putatively, the war is between "extremist" Sunnis and "secular" Sunnis who want a non-sharia-compliant government.  In 1989, the vice-president of the FIS party in Algeria, Ali Belhadj, said in a fiery speech: 

There is no democracy because the only source of power is Allah through the Koran, and not the people. If the people vote against the law of Allah, this is nothing other than blasphemy. In this case, it is necessary to kill the non-believers for the good reason that they wish to substitute their authority for that of Allah.

The AP described the Beni-Messous attack:

The massacre was the deadliest since an Aug. 29 rampage in the village of Rais, south of Algiers, where attackers killed up to 300 people.  Witnesses said the attackers burst into the neighborhood at Beni Messous about 10 p.m. Friday.  "They kicked the door in, took the men, forced them outside, slit their throats," one woman -- the sole survivor of her family -- told The Associated Press.  They came back, took out my aunt and slit her throat, after slashing open her stomach," said the woman, who identified herself only by her family's name, Benbrahin.  The woman escaped through a window of her home, then hid in a nearby forest until daybreak.

Residents said the invaders howled like jackals -- an eerie rallying cry often mentioned by survivors of previous massacres. Most of the victims were women.  Beni Messous is home to a military barracks, and there was no immediate explanation for why help did not come sooner. Algeria's government had no immediate comment. 

If this was a case of anti-government "rebels" attacking, one would assume that government troops in the town would jump at the rare opportunity to counter-attack the elusive rebels.  But the troops stayed in their barracks as the 3 hour murder spree continued.  Perhaps there is more to this story?

For those who persist in tu quoque moral equivalence, and who claim "One person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist", can anyone provide a reference to when George Washington's troops howled like jackals as they slit the throat of pregnant women after slashing their bellies open?  Are we really all the same?  Really?

Wikipedia has this quote:

Everyone remembers that terrible night: “it happened a bit further down, where the disaster stricken people’s town is today. That night, they were putting projectors up to light up the forest so that they could see the terrorists, when one started to hear people screaming.

In the West, we have to go see slasher-zombie movies to get anything close to these scenes.  In Dar al-Islam, they actually live it, year after year, century after century.  And:

[The Algerian government representative] added that the government had urged the main family attacked to move somewhere safer earlier, and it had refused, and reported claims that the family in question had been feeding the terrorists and had possibly become rich as a result.

Given that official explanation for the Beni-Messous massacre, no wonder the causes of the war remain "murky".

Previous Days in the "Religion of Peace™":

Sept 5: Munich Olympics
Sept 4: East Timor jihad
Sept 3: Mongols vs. Mamluks
Sept 2: Richard "Lionheart" vs. Saladin
Sept 1: Beslan Massacre