ALGIERS: Twelve candidates have registered for Algeria’s April 17 presidential election, the APS national news agency said yesterday, with 77-year-old incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika widely expected to win a fourth term.
Public radio earlier announced there were 10 candidates.
The Constitutional Council now has 10 days to examine the applications of the candidates before announcing the final list of contenders for campaigning, which is set to begin on March 23.
Bouteflika, who has been in power since 1999, made a rare public appearance on Monday to submit the papers for his own candidacy.
He confirmed his candidacy on television, the first time he has spoken in public since returning from hospital treatment in Paris in July last year after suffering a mini-stroke.
Ali Benflis, a former prime minister who is seen as Bouteflika’s main challenger, also submitted his own candidacy papers on Tuesday but warned against the possibility of electoral fraud, speaking of “low, dirty and cowardly practices that cast doubts on the credibility of the presidential election”.
But another hopeful, Mohamed Benhamou, criticised such remarks, saying they amount to “calls to civil disobedience aimed at sowing disorder,” APS said.
Algerian army shoots dead civilian
ALGIERS: The army shot dead a civilian and wounded two others when their car failed to stop at a checkpoint in the Kabylie region of eastern Algeria early Wednesday, security sources said. Soldiers opened fire after mistaking the car’s four passengers, who were not from the area, for armed Islamists, who are active in the area.One passenger was killed, two wounded and the fourth arrested, the sources said, without explaining why the car failed to stop. The incident took place before dawn near an army barracks in Mechtras, in the Kabylie region where Islamists are active. Two people, including a woman, were killed in the same region in 2011 in what were also described as cases of mistaken identity by the military. Kabylie, with its mountains and forests, was a heartland of the Islamist insurrection during Algeria’s devastating civil war of the 1990s.
Drone kills 4 Qaeda suspects in Yemen
SANA’A: A US drone strike in northern Yemen yesterday killed four suspected Al Qaeda members, including an Iraq veteran, a military official said. The unmanned aircraft fired two rockets at a vehicle in the Khalka area of Jawf province, the official said, adding that among those killed was Ali Juraym, a local militant chief who had fought in Iraq. The American military operates all drones flying over Yemen in support of Sanaa’s campaign against Al Qaeda and has killed dozens of militants in a sharply intensified campaign in the past year.AFP
