Reports from Algeria say that eighteen people have been killed in two separate attacks blamed on Islamic militants.

Local residents in the Medea region, south of the capital Algiers, said twelve women and children had been killed in the village of Ouezra.

Two girls were also abducted.

In the other attack, six shepherds were killed in a village twenty kilometres east of the town of Medea.

There's been a resurgence of violence in Algeria in recent weeks, with more than one-hundred people killed in attacks blamed on militants.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service