ALGIERS, May 26: The heads of 18 people, including those of two women, were found by taxi drivers on a road, 300 kms south of Algiers, a newspaper has reported. The discovery was made near the town of Ain Maabad, near Djelfa, on the main road leading to the Saharan south of the country, the El-Khabar paper said yesterday.

Officials were unable to confirm the report and as of midday yesterday no accounts were available of where the 18 people had been killed, by whom, or when.

The heads were taken to a nearby hospital for identification, the newspaper added.

In recent months massacres have occurred frequently in Algeria. These are blamed on the ongoing conflict between the military-backed government and the Algerian Islamic fundamentalists.

According to the Press, several sheperds have been killed by suspected Islamists in the past few weeks in Djelfa, a nomadic, agricultural region on a high plateau in central Algeria. In Tiaret, , sheperds had been ordered by fundamentalists not to take their flocks.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.