Thousands of people demonstrated in central Algiers on Friday for a second time this week, confirming the resumption of street protests that had stopped for nearly a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Protesters were met by security forces who used truncheons and fired tear gas when a crowd forced its way through a police barrier to reach the Grand Post Office, the main Algiers rallying point for the anti-government Hirak movement, footage posted on the Interlignes news site showed.
Weekly street protests that began in February 2019 prompted the army to force former veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika from power in the biggest shock to Algeria’s political system in decades, stopping only for a COVID-19 lockdown in March last year.