Algerian press reports say that 412 people were killed in a massacre in western Algeria earlier this week. The Algerian security forces had originally said that 78 people were killed in the attack on Tuesday night against three isolated villages in a mountainous area of the province of Relizane. Our North Africa correspondent Heba Saleh reports:

This is one of the worst massacres in Algeria's six-year conflict pitting armed Islamic groups against the state. The carnage in the western province of Relizane appears to have followed the same pattern already established by numerous other massacres in the central region around Algerirs.

According to local newspaper reports, the assailants arrived at sunset at the end of the first fasting day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and stayed until dawn. They set upon the victims, cutting their throats and hacking them to death using knives and hatchets.

Some bodies were dismembered and even infants were not spared. Algerian newspapers say when the security forces arrived later after the massacre they quickly buried the victims in makeshift graves.

A witness is quoted as saying that he saw 50 bodies being pulled out from a house and 30 others from another next door. The villages where the massacres took place are in a mountainous and wooded area which has always been regarded as dangerous, though it had never been the scene of such a widescale attack.

Indeed, western Algeria had previously been regarded as relatively calm in comparison to the centre. In the last 10 days, however, more than 800 people have been killed, mostly in the west.