Eleven villagers, including two children, have been killed and several others injured in attacks by suspected Islamic rebels in Algeria.

A single group is reported to have carried out two separate attacks on Thursday near the slum village of Douera, about 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) south-west of the capital, Algiers.

Two children aged three and four years old were among the five victims of the first attack, the official APS news agency reported, which is thought to have taken place just before midnight.

About 90 minutes later, six people - reportedly young men - were killed in another attack which residents and the APS said was by the same group.

At least two people were also wounded.

The attacks were initially reported to have taken place in Khraicia, another village to the south of Algiers.

The attackers were suspected Islamic rebels, whose demands for the establishment of an Islamic state have fuelled Algeria's decade-long internal insurgency.

'Blood, blood, destruction'

The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) is known to operate in the area. Other attacks have been blamed on the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).

Official figures say at least 45 people have been killed in the violence in this month alone, and nearly 670 this year.

On Tuesday, 12 people were killed when their bus was sprayed with machine-guns in Medea, 80km south of the capital and a bomb attack on Thursday wounded 14 in Djelida, 130km south-west of Algiers.

Hundreds of thousands have died since 1992

The insurgency began in Algeria in 1992 after the authorities called off an election that radical Islamists seemed likely to win.

Attempts at reconciliation by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika have come to no avail.

The news agency AFP reported the new head of the GIA restating his group's commitment to continuing the violence.

"Neither truce, nor dialogue, nor reconciliation, nor security, but blood, blood, destruction, destruction," he was reported to have said.

"We will continue to destroy their harvests, to take their goods, to rape their women, to decapitate them in the cities, the villages and the deserts."