ALGIERS, January 10, 2012 (AFP)
ALGIERS, January 10, 2012 (AFP)
Clashes erupted Tuesday between police and demonstrators protesting at unemployment in a gas industry town in southern Algeria, leaving at least 10 people wounded, a local official said.
Police also arrested 13 demonstrators in the town of Laghouat, said the representative of the National Coordination for the Defense of the Rights of the Unemployed (CNDDC), Abbes Hadj Aissa.
“There were clashes since this morning, when the population responded to provocations by members of the security forces who insulted elderly people who were waiting for a bus,” he said.
Aissa said that late Monday police had driven a truck at a tent erected by his organisation outside the local administrative headquarters, injuring three people.
He said he saw another seven people wounded when the clashes erupted Tuesday, adding: “The security services asked us to calm the young people down, but the situation is out of control.”
A strike was launched on Sunday in Laghouat, which lies on a high plateau near the major gas fields of Hassi Rmel, at the call of several hundred unemployed people, who are protesting in particular at the employment of foreign personnel.
In Algeria, the unemployment rate among young people, which reached 50 percent 10 years ago, is about 21 percent, according to latest statistics from the International Monetary Fund, published at the end of the year.
People have also been on strike in other oil towns for several days.
