Rais was a poor farming village near Sidi Moussa, south of Algiers. Like many communities in the Mitidja Plain during Algeria's civil war, its residents had voted for the Islamic Salvation Front in the 1992 elections that the military subsequently canceled. Some villagers had supported the Islamist guerrilla groups that emerged from the political crisis, providing food and money. But according to a villager quoted by PBS, Rais had recently stopped cooperating with the armed groups. In the brutal calculus of Algeria's civil conflict, a village that withdrew its support became a target -- punished for its disloyalty by the very groups it had once aided. The village's population had already dropped from 1,000 to several hundred as the violence intensified across the region.

The attackers arrived around 1 a.m. and continued killing for approximately five hours. They went through the village systematically, cutting throats, mutilating the dead, bombing and burning houses. Young women were abducted rather than killed -- roughly twenty were carried away by the attackers when they departed at dawn. In some cases, severed heads were left on doorsteps. The eyewitness testimony recorded by human rights organizations describes violence of an almost incomprehensible cruelty, directed at men, women, children, and animals alike. Mrs. Bachiri, testifying before the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights, described the deaths of her sixteen brothers and their children in detail that no summary can adequately convey.

What transformed Rais from a massacre into a lasting controversy was the behavior of the Algerian security forces. Army units were stationed outside the village. An army barracks sat 100 meters from the killing. Villagers who fled during the early moments of the attack sought help from the nearby soldiers, who did not enter the village until after the attackers had departed. Amnesty International confirmed that security forces were aware the massacre was occurring as it happened. Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia told ITN that the army intervened "as quickly as it was possible," and authorities cited fears of mines and ambushes. But a rescue worker interviewed by Human Rights Watch noted that the first gendarmes to arrive had taken no precautions against mines at all -- they simply drove in. The government later told the UN Commission on Human Rights that four perpetrators had been identified and warrants issued. How four people killed 238 was not explained.

The official death toll varied wildly depending on the source: 98 according to the initial government count, 238 in the figure given to the UN, at least 200 according to CNN, up to 400 according to other reports, and as high as 800 according to the BBC. Whatever the true number, Rais as a community was effectively destroyed. Most survivors fled, and the village's population, already diminished by years of civil conflict, dwindled to almost nothing. Some who remained were given arms by the government for self-defense. Years later, when President Abdelaziz Bouteflika proposed amnesty for certain armed group members under the Law of National Reconciliation, residents of Rais publicly opposed the measure, fearing it would extend to the people who had killed their neighbors. The massacre at Rais occurred three weeks before the Bentalha massacre, and together the two attacks marked the bloodiest period of Algeria's civil war -- a season of killing that forced the international community to confront the depth of the country's crisis.