Riots Algeria

Calm returned to Algiers on Friday, a day after the army intervened to quell three days of bloody rioting over price increases, food shortages and new government austerity measures affecting the poor, sources in the Algerian capital said. But there were unconfirmed reports of new disturbances in Oran, Algeria's second-largest city, and several thousand Islamic fundamentalists carried out a tense but nonviolent confrontation with police and soldiers in suburban Algiers.

Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid announced Wednesday that the political reforms he promised to make in the wake of last week's anti-government riots will be put to a popular vote in two referendums starting next month. A three-point communique issued by Bendjedid's office said the first referendum, to be held Nov. 3, will ask Algerians to approve the appointment of a new premier who will be responsible before the People's National Assembly, Algeria's 295-seat Parliament.

A state of siege in the Algerian capital was to be lifted today, six days after it was imposed to quell widespread rioting over food shortages and economic austerity measures, the government announced Tuesday. A brief statement issued by President Chadli Bendjedid's office said the state of siege would end at 6 a.m. local time today, following more than a day of calm throughout the capital.

Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid on Saturday fired his chief lieutenant, Mohammed Sherif Mussaadia, evidently blaming him for riots that raged in the North African nation earlier this month, the official Algerian Press Service and diplomatic sources said. Mussaadia was called to "other functions," according to the dispatch from the state-run news agency, monitored in Abu Dhabi. It said Abdelhamid Mehri, recently named Algeria's ambassador to Morocco, would replace Mussaadia.

Algerian authorities Thursday declared a state of emergency and called out the army as thousands of demonstrators clashed with police in downtown Algiers on the third day of widespread rioting over food shortages and rising prices. There were no official figures on casualties, but residents and other witnesses in Algiers reported hearing sporadic gunfire throughout the city. They said the rioting was the worst they had ever seen in the Algerian capital.

The government has banned all demonstrations in the capital, Algiers, following fierce rioting last week during a massive pro-democracy demonstration. For two months, the military-backed government has been grappling with violent protests that have left at least 55 people dead. The unrest began among ethnic Berbers in the eastern Kabyle region but has spread to Algiers. Three police officers were reported killed and dozens of people hurt Monday during riots in Kabyle.

Hundreds rioted in eastern Algeria on Friday, smashing windows and windshields in anger at the killing of a popular Berber singer who had criticized both the government and the nation's Muslim insurgency. The Thursday shooting of Lounes Matoub sparked an outpouring of emotion among young people in Tizi Ouzou, the regional capital of Algeria's Berber people.

Rioters and Algerian security forces fought street battles for five hours Saturday in the western port city of Oran, witnesses said, while scattered violence was reported in the capital of Algiers. Oran, the nation's second-largest city, was already said to be badly damaged by rioting that broke out Friday, several days after the capital was first rocked by violence over sharp price increases in the government's austerity program.

After a weekend of worsening violence that has left up to 40 people dead, Algeria's military-backed government Sunday declared a 12-month state of emergency and moved to ban the Islamic fundamentalist political party.

Police shot dead at least 16 civilians as riots raged on in Berber-speaking areas of eastern Algeria, medical sources said, bringing the civilian death toll after almost a week of violence between Berber demonstrators and security forces to at least 31. Hospital officials in Tizi Ouzou, 55 miles east of Algiers, said that 14 people were killed and 34 wounded in clashes there, most by gunfire. In Bejaia, farther east, a hospital official said two people were killed.