Lahbib Messai: A member of the decimated family

Messai Lahbib, a family member killed in bomb attack last Wednesday evening around 7 pm, said that the day before the massacre, a group of terrorists came to their home in Fom El Metlegh. They were wearing Afghan clothes and hiding their faces. They were carried Kalashnikovs. "They broke into the house and asked to eat. We gave them all what was there for our dinner. After eating, they asked me for money (2 million centimes), I replied that I did not have that sum of money. So they took the head of a sheep and insisted that I had to prepare the money requested and left."

• Ennahar made a visit to Lahbib at his modest family home in the town of Sefsaf El Ouesri - at about 60 km south of Tébessa – He moved the next day to the town of Tébessa to inform the security services about the visit of terrorists.
  
  He did not know what was going to happen that day. His cousin Messai Youcef tells us “after the departure of a group of "404" cars to bring the family after Lahbib has informed us of the visit of the terrorists, we took five cars and drove across the road without any incident but on our return, the disaster occurred; Messai Omar, born in 1974 in El Ma Labiod, Messai Wassila his wife, born in 1984, her sister Messai Sabah, born in 1984 and Lahbib’s son, born on 25 December 2008, all died in the explosion of a bomb.
  
  An hour after the incident, the security services arrived. When the head of the gendarmerie brigade of Bir El Ater came, he asked all the persons present to leave the scene of the incident. He took photographs of the shredded bodies of the victims.
  
  The gendarmerie brigade puts his foot on a part of the vehicle, when suddenly the second bomb exploded injuring 3 gendarmes including the head of the gendarmerie brigade of El Eulga El Malha who was seriously injured and taken to the military hospital of Constantine. An officer of civil protection was also injured and a member of the Communal People's Assembly of the municipality of El Eulga and an element of self defense.
  
  According to Lahbib, the brother of the victim Omar, they live in this place for about a year, as cattle ranchers. He adds that they never noticed the presence of terrorists in this region.