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Algeria Cracks
Down on Protesters, Seven Killed
ALGIERS, June 19
(IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's embattled government has raised the stakes by cracking down on protests in the countries capital of Algiers as riots in the country's northeast left another seven people dead.
Reeling from a massive ethnic Berber-led protest march last Thursday that drew almost a million people and turned riotous and bloody, the government announced late on Monday that it issued a ban on protests in the capital "until further notice."
Observers said the ban would enable government to call in the military to defend state property in the event of a popular uprising.
In a follow-up statement released on Tuesday, the government expressed its "determination" to "deal with the serious excesses witnessed during the tragic and painful events of these last few days."
The rioting in Algiers has resulted in four deaths and 946 injuries, and caused damages estimated at millions of dollars.
Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni had pushed for a suspension on all marches in Algeria, saying that demonstrators had been caught "red-handed" looting shops.
Announcing the ban Monday night, Prime Minister Ali Benflis made an appeal on state television for calm.
"We have only one country: Algeria. We must, in all the regions, preserve our dear homeland and the people's property," he said.
Even as he was speaking, however, rioting was continuing in the Berbers' homeland of Kabylie and several other northeastern towns. Newspapers reported on Tuesday that another seven people had been killed in clashes between police and protestors, with two paramilitary policemen among the casualties.
Five of Monday's killings occurred in Kabylie, the scene of ongoing rioting since April, while two people were killed at Chrea, in the Tebessa region, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) east of Algiers, the reports said.
The latest deaths bring the unofficial death toll up to 87 people killed since widespread violence flared up two months ago among ethnic Berbers angry over heavy-handed police tactics, poor social conditions and discrimination.
Official figures put the toll at 56 people killed and 2,300 injured.
According to Tuesday's reports, three demonstrators were killed and 15 hurt on Monday at Akbou, near Kabylie's second largest city of Bejaia, some 250 kilometers east of Algiers.
A paramilitary gendarme was killed and 27 protestors injured at Dra Ben Khedda, near the Kabylie capital of Tizi Ouzou, about 110 kilometers east of Algiers.
Another gendarme was killed during clashes at Tizi Rached, in the same region, the reports said.
The two killed in Chrea were shot dead by a hotelier who opened fire on the crowd when his hotel came under attack, according to Le Matin newspaper.
The hotelier was later beaten senseless and his establishment torched by the angry protestors, the paper said.
At least 13 Algerian soldiers were killed when Islamic activists ambushed them in the western Chlef region in one of the bloodiest attacks in recent months, press reports said Tuesday.
The assailants set off explosives and opened fire at soldiers on their way to help victims of an earlier attack at the nearby village of K'dadra, the reports said. Some reports said 27 soldiers were killed.
The papers blamed a faction of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) for the ambush, which took place on Sunday.
The Chlef region, some 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) west of the capital Algiers, along with neighboring Ain Defla, is often the scene of brutal attacks by Islamic fundamentalists from the GIA.
An uprising broke out early 1992, when the army prevented the now-outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) from taking power by calling off the second round of general elections it was poised to win.
The army under Bouteflika continued to draw criticism from human rights campaigners for alleged executions and for failing to prevent massacres.
Bouteflika was elected in April 1999 on a promise to restore national harmony and end years of bloodshed. The one-time foreign minister released thousands of armed activists from prison and won national backing for a civil concord offering amnesty to armed so-called Islamists. Hundreds of rebels have taken up the offer but violence has continued.
Algeria, a gateway between Africa and Europe, has been battered by violence over the past half-century and remains at war with itself. More than a million Algerians were killed in the fight for independence from France in 1962 and an estimated 100,000 have died in the current power struggle, according to the BBC online service.
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