Liamine Zeroual

The young leader of Algeria's most ruthless Islamic terrorist militia has been cornered and killed, along with as many as 100 of his followers, in a major army assault on ancient tunnels where the extremists were hiding, newspapers in Algiers reported Thursday. There was no official announcement to confirm the reported death of Antar Zouabri, an Islamic zealot in his 20s who once said that anyone who disagreed with him deserved death.

Although Algeria had been claiming progress in bringing a violent Islamic insurgency under control, a wave of gory attacks and shattering explosions in the past two weeks has shown that neither suppression nor constitutional reform has quelled the country's agony. Since the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began Jan. 10, a wave of killing in Algeria has claimed more than 125 victims--some of them slain in rural areas, left with their throats slashed and their heads on pikes.

Attackers with machine guns, firebombs and knives invaded a neighborhood outside the Algerian capital early Tuesday and methodically killed scores of men, women and children in one of the worst episodes in nearly six years of political bloodshed, witnesses said. Although the government reported 85 people killed, medical workers, gravediggers and witnesses said they counted more than 200 bodies in the suburb of Baraki, just east of Algiers.

When Algeria's military-backed government insisted on staging elections two weeks ago, the odds were good for a disaster. The country was, after all, in the midst of a vicious civil war, and key political opponents were either in jail or in exile. Yet when former Gen.

Two important Algerian opposition parties opened talks Sunday with Algerian President Liamine Zeroual, and a third has accepted his invitation, suggesting that the recent army crackdown on radical Islamic groups has begun to soften the positions of the government's more moderate foes.

Capping a week of surprise gestures aimed at easing the bloody divisions in Algeria, the government of President Liamine Zeroual on Tuesday released from prison the founder of the country's banned Islamic Salvation Front. Abassi Madani, jailed since June 1991, walked out of Algiers' Seradji prison "on parole" after serving six years of a 12-year sentence.

In their first major breakthrough in combatting the terrorist wave gripping France, police said Thursday they had foiled a bombing planned for this weekend and arrested several people, including an Algerian man overheard giving orders to plant the device. Jean-Louis Debre, the French Interior minister, hailed the arrests as "a new, decisive step . . . toward neutralizing this group of terrorists." But, he added, "The threat remains. More attacks can still occur."

A major Algerian crackdown on Islamic militants, which reportedly resulted in more than 1,000 rebel deaths last week, appears to be part of an all-out government effort to crush the guerrilla movement and restore order before elections later this year, analysts said Wednesday. Even as news of the death toll in four Algerian provinces surfaced earlier this week, the Islamic extremists struck a highly visible blow in the heart of Algiers.

Seven French monks kidnapped two months ago from a monastery in Algeria were executed this week by Islamic militants in the worst massacre of foreigners there since 1993, French officials said Friday. The announcement sent waves of shock and anger through France, where Muslims, Roman Catholics and Jews had conducted dozens of prayer vigils and appealed to the guerrillas to spare the captives, who ranged in age from 59 to 82.

Reeling from a recent spate of massacres, Algeria's government ordered the house arrest Monday of an Islamic leader released from prison just seven weeks ago. The Interior Ministry announced it will restrict the freedom of Abbasi Madani, spiritual leader of the banned Islamic Salvation Front, on grounds he had become involved in unacceptable political activities.