Gunmen Kill Noted Editor In Algiers

Gunmen ambushed the editor of Algeria’s oldest newspaper in traffic and shot him to death Monday, just days after he spoke publicly about his fear of being killed by Islamic radicals.

The gunmen escaped in a waiting car. There was no claim of responsibility, but security forces blamed antigovernment militants who are suspected in a series of high-profile killings of intellectuals and journalists.

Mohamed Abderrahmani, 57, editor of the government-owned El Moudjahid newspaper and the father of seven, was the 30th Algerian journalist killed since May 1993.

“Like everyone, I feel threatened. I consider myself a target,” he said in an interview broadcast Monday on French TV. “The world must be made aware of this drama.”

The Islamic radicals, who went to war against the military-installed government in 1992, accuse journalists of collaborating with attempts to crush their insurgency.

Abderrahmani was the second leading editor killed in the past four months. Said Mekbel, editor-in-chief of Le Matin, a French-language newspaper critical of the fundamentalists, was shot and killed in Algiers last Dec. 3.

During the weekend, news reports said soldiers killed as many as 600 extremists in an attack in Ain Defla, west of Algiers. The government has not confirmed those reports.