ALGIERS, Algeria, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- Protesters in Algiers Saturday were met by a strong police response that included the arrest of scores of activists seeking to topple the Algerian government.
The numbers of protesters ranged from a government estimate of about 1,500 to rally organizers' who said there were 10,000 or more.
Britain's Sunday Mirror reported more than 400 protesters were taken into custody as they clashed with police, who used tear gas to dispel the crowds.
"Bouteflika out!" the demonstrators shouted, referring to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Ennahar Online reported other protesters chanted "Free Algeria" and "The regime out!"
There also were several dozen counter-demonstrators who showed their support for the president by yelling "Bouteflika is not Mubarak", referring to the deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
The autocratic Bouteflika has been in power since 1999.
The New York Times reported witnesses said thousands of police officers prevented the demonstrators from carrying out their planned march through the capital. Once the crowds filtered away by late afternoon, the area was sealed off by police and dozens of armored vehicles, the U.S. newspaper said.
Like in Tunisia and Egypt, where long-entrenched leaders have been forced out, these protesters decry unemployment, government corruption and police-state tactics they say keep Algerians under the government's thumb.
"They can't kill us because we are already dead," Bilal Boudamous, a 29-year-old jobless Algerian told the Times. "At 30 we are unemployed, we live with our parents, and we have no future."
The police, he said, "are there to stifle us, to prevent us from doing anything."
A civil servant, identified as Mourad, said "it's always been like this."
"We are used to this. It's not easy to change a whole system," he said. "Algeria is not Egypt or Tunisia."
