Wilaya of Relizane massacres of 4 January 1998

1998 Relizane massacres
Part of Algerian Civil War
Location	Oued Rhiou, Algeria
Date	4 January 1998
Deaths	At least 172 villagers

Algerian Civil War

Beginning of war 1991–1994

1990 Algerian local elections
Guemmar
1991 legislative elections
1992 coup
Assassination of Mohamed Boudiaf
Algiers
Blida
Assassinations of journalists

Escalation 1994–1996

Tazoult
Tenes
Ain Allah
Berrouaghia
Air France Flight 8969
Algiers
Sundus
Serkadji
Ain Defla
Ghardaïa
France

Massacres and reconciliation 1996–1999

Defeat of the GIA 1999–2002

Algerian massacres in 1998

Massacres in which over 50 people were killed:

Wilaya of Relizane massacres	4 January
Sidi-Hamed massacre	11 January
Oued Bouaicha massacre	26 March
Baloul massacre	2 September
Tadjena massacre	8 December

← 1997

1999 →

The Wilaya of Relizane massacres of 4 January 1998 took place in three remote villages around Oued Rhiou about 150 miles (240 km) west of Algiers, during the Algerian conflict of the 1990s. At least 172 villagers were killed in a single day of Ramadan:

at Had Chekala, no residents survived; more than thirty guerrillas burned the village down afterwards
at Remka, initial reports claimed 117 killed; in 2006, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia declared that the true toll had been 1000, and that the government had "hid[den] the truth because you don't go into battle proclaiming defeat." A survivor told La Tribune "One pregnant woman had her fetus cut out and slaughtered."
at Ain Tarik, an unknown number were killed

The massacres were attributed to the GIA, and had been preceded some days before by the Wilaya of Relizane massacres of 30 December 1997. They provoked mass population flight from the afflicted area - the population of Ramka, for instance, dropped from 9,200 in 1990 to 5,215 in 1998 - and led to international condemnation and calls for an independent investigation.