Hundreds of young protesters clashed over the weekend with riot police in Berber areas of Algeria where more than 40 people died in riots in late April and early this month.
Eyewitnesses said hundreds of young activists pelted police with stones and set trees and tyres ablaze on Sunday at Seddouk, a small town 45 km (28 miles) southwest of Bejais, one of the two main cities in the Berber-speaking Kabylie region.
Police fire tear gas canisters in retaliation. There were no immediate reports of injuries, but hospital sources said police shot and wounded two young men on Saturday as activists tried to break into the barracks of paramilitary gendarmes.
Similar protests also took place in the Sidi Yaich and Aoukas areas in Bejaia province on Sunday, residents said.
The protesters took to the streets to demand the government withdraw paramilitary gendarmes they see as a ruthless and corrupt force.
The government has admitted that security forces killed 42 people during riots in Bejaias and Tizi Ouzou in late April and early May. Independent newspapers said as many as 80 people had died.
"The gendarmes have to leave Seddouk and the whole Kabylie region because they killed our comrades and they are corrupt," protester Omar Benmeziane said in Seddouk on Sunday.
The riots, fanned by deep social and economic frustrations among Berber youths, erupted after the death of a teenager in custody at a gendarmerie barracks on April 18.
Activists planned bigger street demonstrations and a general strike in Tizi Ouzou on Monday as part of a mobilisation of Berbers to pressure the government to withdraw the gendarmes and punish security officials for the killings.
Algeria has been beset by violence since early 1992 when the authorities cancelled a general election in which radical Islamists had taken a commanding lead -- SEDDOUK, Algeria (Reuters)
