Algeria protesters clash with police for second day

Protesters threw stones and petrol bombs at police in Algeria’s capital on Tuesday in a second day of clashes over housing conditions.

Tens of young men were throwing missiles from the edge of a shantytown at about 300 police in riot gear at the opposite side of a road, a Reuters reporter said.

Algeria, an oil and gas producer which suffers from high unemployment and a housing shortage, has seen periodic outbreaks of rioting but rarely in the heavily-policed capital.

A security source at the scene of the clashes, about 100 metres (yards) from Algeria’s Communications Ministry, said several police had been injured. Roads were blocked off and the ground was littered with stones and other debris.

The clashes broke out on Monday when some residents of the shantytown, in the Diar Echams district of Algiers, protested that they had not been included on a list of people who qualified for re-housing.

Police on Monday used water cannon and tear gas to try to disperse the protesters, witnesses said.

There was a lull on Tuesday morning as protesters’ representatives held negotiations with the local authorities, but the clashes resumed after the talks broke down.

Algeria, an OPEC member and the world’s fourth biggest exporter of natural gas, is also the scene of a conflict between the government and Islamist insurgents affiliated to al Qaeda.

The conflict has subsided in the past few years, and some analysts now say social unrest has replaced the insurgency as the biggest threat to stability.

Many people in the former French colony of 35 million say they are frustrated at the lack of jobs and housing.

The government has already spent billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues on projects to improve living standards and this year announced it would spend a further $150 billion on modernising the economy and creating jobs.

Reuters.