HIGHLIGHTS: Undeclared Civil War Claims 100, 000 Lives||Vote is First Since Annuled Elections Islamists Were Poised to Win in 1992||Ruling (FLN) Expected to Win||STORY: Strife-torn Algeria voted on Thursday under the shadow of armed opposition killings in a parliamentary election boycotted by other political opposition parties and pro-democracy ethnic Berber militants. (Read photo caption)

Suspected armed opposition groups killed 23 civilians hours before voting began in the vast North African country, the latest in a series of massacres and bomb attacks in an undeclared civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people in the past decade.

VOTE IS FIRST SINCE ANNAULED ELECTION RESIULTS IN 1992

The vote to elect 389 members of the lower house of parliament was the second since a bloody uprising flared after the cancellation of general election in January 1992 in which a now-outlawed Muslim fundamentalist party had taken a commanding lead.

The overnight raid by "a terrorist group" -- words used by the Algerian media to refer to armed opposition attack -- occurred in the village of Sendjas in Chlef province, some 200 km (125 miles) west of the capital Algiers. Three of the victims, all nomads, were set on fire, the official news agency APS said.

Political analysts predicted a win by parties of the current government coalition of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, but said voter apathy and a general disillusionment with a political class seen as aloof and corrupt would mean a low turnout.

Opponents accuse a secretive, mafia-like establishment of squandering large oil and gas export revenues --22 billion U.S. dollars in 2001 -- while more than half the 31 million population survive on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day.

RUNNING BATTLES

The Socialist Forces Front (FFS) and the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), the country's two leading opposition forces, have called for a boycott of the election, saying military-backed authorities are illegitimate and plan massive fraud, as in the previous legislative poll in 1997.

Official results would have no significance, they said.

The National Liberation Front (FLN), the formerly dominant force in Algeria's post-independence one-party state and rejuvenated in recent months by Prime Minister Ali Benflis, was expected to win most seats.

Berber militants, who have been protesting for the past year over economic, security and cultural issues, vowed to disrupt the poll in the mountainous restive Kabylie region.

Groups of young demonstrators besieged polling stations with burning tyres in Kabylie's main city of Tizi-Ouzou, 55 miles east of Algiers. (Read photo caption)

They fought running battles in a downtown area, throwing rocks at security forces who responded with tear gas canisters.

There were no reports of injuries.

Similar incidents erupted in several villages across Kabylie, according to residents and media reports.

On Wednesday, security forces fired rubber bullets and injured a dozen demonstrators in Akbou. Four buses, said to be carrying "bogus voters," were set on fire.

PHOTO CAPTION

A young Berber protester kneels in front of burning tires and stones at a makeshift barricade erected on a road outside the village of Oued Aissi, in Algeria's restive Kabylie region May 29, 2002. Berber activists have called for a boycott of a parliamentary vote on Thursday in Kabylie, which has been rocked by social unrest for the past year. (Zohra Bensemra/Reute