Civil unrest spread across Algeria Wednesday, with ethnic Berbers rioting just a day after youths took on police in other towns, in the worst political crisis to face President Abdelaziz Bouteflika since he came to power in 1999.
In Bejaia, a main city in the Kabylie region, Berbers erected barricades and faced off with police.
Berbers staged six weeks of riots in Kabylie over alleged police brutality and longstanding grievances such as cultural discrimination, language and unemployment.
A police crackdown on the unrest, which broke out in April, left 52 people dead and 1,300 others wounded, according to official estimates.
Anger and dissatisfaction with Bouteflika's government has spread beyond the Berber homeland, this week reaching the eastern towns of Khenchela, Skikda and Ain Fakroun, and moving south to Dirah.
Authorities in Algiers were bracing for potential trouble on Thursday, with a massive protest march by Berbers planned for the capital.
Last month's demonstration in the eastern town of Tizi Ouzou, drew more than 500,000 people.
Wednesday's riots in Bejaia were instigated by a local labour union protesting against nine months of salaries owed to workers at a state-owned jute factory, sources said.
Rioting in Khenchela, some 550 kilometers (330 miles) from Algiers, broke out on Sunday after a woman was killed by police who fired warning shots at youths trying to set public buildings ablaze.
The woman died of a gunshot wound during riots on Monday, witnesses said.
Youths again went head to head with riot police on Tuesday, attacking public offices, including a regional agricultural building.
Some 100 other people have so far been injured in Khenchela, which was reported to be quiet on Wednesday, although witnesses said tensions remained high.
Khenchela demonstrators took out their anger on the symbols of the state, ransacking public buildings and attacking riot police.
The rioting took on a similar form in other towns.
When a referee stopped a football match in Skikda, a large oil port in the east, it ignited passions to the point where supporters poured out of the stadium into the streets and began torching public buildings and shops.
At Ain Fakroun, near to the town of Constantine, 430 kilometers (270 miles) east of Algiers, rioters, citing unemployment and poor economic prospects, torched public buildings and set up barricades in the town of 50,000 people.
Ain Fakroun is among the hardest-hit by unemployment in Algeria, where joblessness runs at about 30 percent, according to economists.
To the south of Algiers, in Dirah, close to the town of Sour El Ghozlane, an advertisement claiming that officials in a public company had been abusive was enough to put fire to the powder.
Rioters quickly occupied the town, which was deserted by police clearly wanting to avoid confrontation.
That rioting has spread beyond the Berber region is indication of deep-seated unhappiness with Bouteflika's government, newspaper editorialists said Wednesday.
The Berber discontent, rooted in longstanding grievances over perceived discrimination, has mushroomed into far broader resentment over unemployment, lack of adequate housing and the role of the paramilitary police in Kabylie.
The Liberty newspaper on Wednesday commenting warned that "an umbilical cord binds the rioters."
The cord, it said, is "no employment, no money, no housing, no future."
"The conflict at Khenchela...weakens the claim by the government that the events at Kabylie are the doings of an ethnic minority with anti-government aims," said the Oran newspaper.
A newspaper of the National Liberation Front, a key party in Bouteflika's ruling coalition, warned that "all indicators show that the country will live through its hottest summer since independence, and its most dangerous, since nobody is able to predict the outcome of events."
The president, criticized over his handling of the crisis, is also reported to be at odds with elements in the military, which shores up the government.
Bouteflika has denied the reports – ALGIERS (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
