Up to 2000 Algerian demonstrators briefly forced a police cordon Saturday as they tried to begin a banned march calling for regime change a day after the fall of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak.
Protesters, put at 800 by police but estimated at 2000 by journalists at the scene, found themselves blocked again by massed security forces, who had encircled the area, backed up by armoured vehicles.
There were scuffles with security forces and numerous arrests well before the march called by the National Coordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD) had been due to begin at 11AM, witnesses said.
An AFP journalist saw two arrests, one of them of a deputy from the opposition Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), Othmane Maazouz.
Other journalists reported seeing several other arrests.
Demonstrators, who included Ali Bejadj, one of the leaders of the banned Islamic Salvation Front, chanted "Free Algeria" in Arabic or "Regime out!"
President of the RCD Said Sadi told AFP by telephone that he was outraged that 90-year-old veteran human rights campaigner Ali Yahia Abdelnour had been manhandled by police.
He said that police had already violently dispersed a gathering on Friday of people celebrating Mubarak's downfall and made ten arrests.
"It wasn't even an organised demonstration. It was spontaneous. It was an explosion of joy," he said.
From early Saturday authorities took draconian measures against the planned protest with nearly 30,000 police deployed in the capital along the proposed route of the march.
Anti-riot vehicles and water cannon were seen ready for action near the square where it was scheduled to begin.
Police roadblocks on avenues leading into the city following suicide attacks in 2007 had been strengthened and uniformed police were patrolling the streets.
Traffic jams began an hour earlier than usual, around 6:30AM, with nervous drivers honking their horns non-stop.
In the main western city of Oran where another demonstration had also been banned by the authorities, between 400 and 500 protesters had already rallied in a central square by 11AM.
A dozen arrests had already been made, an AFP correspondent said. They included a reporter with the Arabic language daily El Khabar, Djaafar Bensaleh, who took a phone call from AFP in a police van.
The CNCD, an umbrella group of opposition parties, civil society movements and unofficial unions announced the march in Algiers when it was set up only three weeks ago, emboldened by the mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt which brought down their longstanding autocratic rulers.
The CNCD is demanding the immediate end of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's regime, citing the same problems of high unemployment, housing problems and soaring costs that inspired uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Like their north African counterparts, the protesters have used Facebook and text messages to spread their call for change.
A 36-year-old unemployed father of six died in eastern Algeria Friday after setting himself on fire on 17 January in regional council offices in eastern Algeria, his family said.
His death brought to four the number of Algerians who have died from self-immolation since January.
Altogether, at least a dozen Algerians have set themselves on fire so far this year, apparently inspired by a similar act in neighbouring Tunisia that was the catalyst for the uprising that toppled that country's authoritarian regime.
