At least half a million people marched through Tizi Ouzou, Algeria's main Berber town, in a protest marked by clashes with riot police, eyewitnesses said yesterday.
Rally organisers said the protesters, who took to the streets in Tizi Ouzou, 90 km east of Algiers, numbered more than a million. The marchers called for the withdrawal of paramilitary gendarmes blamed for killing scores of rioters in April and May.
Independent reporters put the number of mostly young marchers at half a million. Eyewitnesses said hundreds of the activists pelted police and gendarmes with stones, and riot police fired tear gas canisters in retaliation.
"The clashes are scattered in several places in the city," said one witness. It was not immediately clear if there were injuries or arrests.
The eyewitnesses said hundreds of protesters challenged gendarmes and riot police as demonstrators began to disperse.
The crowds called on the Algerian government to pull the gendarmes out of the Berber-speaking Kabylie region that comprises Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia provinces east of Algiers. Police kept a low profile during the march as demonstrators chanted "Terrorist gendarmes out of our region".
The march was the latest in a series of demonstrations since the killings of at least 42 people in riots in late April and early May in Kabylie.