Fresh anti-government riots broke out in Kabylie and elsewhere in Algeria's northeast as an Islamic extremist leader called on protesters to join his armed movement, press reports said on Sunday.
Riot police and protesters clashed violently on Saturday in Bejaia and Tizi Ouzou, the two main cities in the ethnic Berber region of Kabylie, where resentment over social conditions has boiled over into rage against the central government.
Anti-government unrest, which began spreading beyond Kabylie a week ago, also hit the far northeastern port of Annaba, some 600 kilometers (360 miles) east of the capital Algiers. A young demonstrator was killed in riots in the port city, crushed by an iron table during the looting of a shop, daily newspaper El Watan reported.
Meanwhile, the head of the Islamic extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) on Saturday urged Berbers to join its armed fight against the government, daily Al-Fadjr (Dawn) reported.
GSPC leader Hassan Hattab, using his nom de guerre Abou Hamza, made the call in posters that appeared in the Kabylie capital Tizi Ouzou on Saturday, Al-Fadjir said.
The GSPC, which is active in the Kabylie region, and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), with strongholds in mountains near Algiers, have both refused to lay down their arms in a civil war that has claimed some 100,000 lives since 1992.
The GSPC appeared to be taking advantage of the unrest that has engulfed Kabylie since mid-April, when a young Berber was killed in police custody.
In Bejaia on Saturday, fierce clashes surrounded the burial of a motorcyclist killed two days earlier when he was struck by an unmarked police car.
Protesters torched a telephone center and a warehouse belonging to the national oil and gas company Sonatrach, and they sacked a government finance office for the second time, media reports said.
In Tizi Ouzou, about 15 people were injured in riots.
Elsewhere in Kabylie, clashes broke out in Azazga, where daily Liberte said some 60 people had been hurt, and in Maatkas, Mekla and Tigzirt.
In the Setif region which borders Kabylie and where many people speak the Berber language Tamazight, rioting was reported in Ain Kebira, Tizi N'Bechar and Amoucha.
Further south in Ain Naga, in the Biskra region, 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of Algiers, several hundred youths barricaded the national highway with palm trees, demanding jobs and accusing local officials of abusing their authority, the reports said -- ALGIERS (AFP)
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