ALGIERS, Algeria, Dec. 6 (AP) - Attackers killed four people leaving a crowded mosque after prayer service at the end of the day's fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, newspapers reported Wednesday.

The weekend attack at a mosque in the city of Djelfa, some 280 kilometers (175 miles) south of Algiers, brought to at least a dozen the number of people reported killed over three days around Algiers.

Alleged Islamic militants fired from a vehicle into the crowd at the mosque in Djelfa, according to the French-language daily Liberte. Three people died instantly and a fourth person, an 11-year-old child, died in the hospital from head injuries, the paper said.

Elsewhere, three more suspected insurgents were killed during confrontations with security forces in the Chlef region, 230 kilometers (143 miles) west of the capital, La Tribune reported.

The sweep operation, which began Sunday and was still in progress Tuesday night, had already claimed the lives of two insurgents and three members of a government-armed civilian security force.

The daily El Watan reported that some 50 Islamic militants were encircled and under bombardment in an army offensive at El Ancer, in the Jijel region, some 350 kilometers (220 miles) east of Algiers.

This North African nation has lost more than 100,000 people to violence since the Islamic insurgency erupted after the army canceled January 1992 national elections that a Muslim fundamentalist party was poised to win. Despite government efforts to quell the violence, new killings are reported almost daily.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has sought to restore peace with a national reconciliation program that offered partial amnesty to militants not guilty of rape, murder or bombings.