45 Massacred in Algeria; 46 Bodies Found in Well

ALGIERS —  An armed band killed 45 people in a predawn attack Wednesday that was the bloodiest massacre in Algeria in months, security forces said.

Separately, authorities said Wednesday that they had pulled 46 bodies from a 180-foot-deep well used as a mass grave in Meftah, 15 miles south of central Algiers. Many more victims remain in the mass grave, which could be up to 2 years old.

Security forces blamed Wednesday’s massacre in Tadjena, about 125 miles west of Algiers, on Muslim insurgents.

In 1992, the government canceled elections that the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front was expected to win, triggering an insurgency that has claimed more than 75,000 lives.