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Algerian police on Friday established a tight cordon around a key protest site, arresting dozens of protesters at the biggest show of force in 14 weeks of mbad protests.
Protesters gathered in front of the Grand Post Office in Algiers every week since February, forcing veteran President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to withdraw in early April after two decades in power.
They continued to hold major protests every Friday, demanding radical reforms and the departure of regime figures, including army chief Ahmed Gaid Salah and acting president Abdelkader Bensalah.
But before this week's protest, security forces erected gates to prevent protesters from accessing the site.
Several hundred demonstrators gathered near the building, chanting "Tired of Generals!" "Gaid Salah resigns!"
However, they were kept away by a cordon of police and a row of vehicles, and an AFP reporter saw a woman arrested nearby.
"Patrols have crisscrossed the city and arrested anyone suspected of being part of the population," said Said Salhi, vice president of the Algerian League for Human Rights, on Twitter.
"It seems like they want to ban the rally."
But despite the arrests and difficulties of demonstrating during the month of Islamic fasting Ramadan, a huge crowd invades the streets of Algiers.
Mehenna Abdeslam, a protester and university professor, told AFP that he had seen "the police systematically stop anyone with a banner."
But he added that this would not prevent Algerians from demonstrating.
The local news site TSA announced that the police in Algiers had "carried out mbad arrests among the protesters".
He also noted a strong presence of female police officers for the first time since the beginning of the demonstrations.
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An activist of the Algerian Socialist Workers Party wrote on Facebook that he was detained "with about twenty other citizens in a police van".
The official APS news agency reported demonstrations in 25 of the 48 regions of North Africa. Additional gatherings are expected in the southern desert during the cooler hours of the evening.
Most demonstrators in Algiers dispersed peacefully later in the day.
A presidential election originally scheduled for April is scheduled for July 4, but protesters reject it, saying that a vote will only be valid if new independent institutions are put in place to oversee the vote.
As the deadline for candidate registration approaches, no major perspective has been advanced.
While Bensalah and Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui remained relatively calm, Salah delivered three speeches in as many days this week.
On Monday, he protested against protesters' demands, saying that calls from key members of the Bouteflika ruling circle were "unreasonable or even dangerous".
Preparations for the presidential election should be accelerated to avoid "the trap of a constitutional vacuum," he said, adding that the vote "would stop those who try to prolong this crisis."
On Tuesday, he called on protesters to "unite" with the army to prevent "instigators" from hijacking the protests, and on Wednesday he badured the public that he had not "no political ambition".
Some observers have pointed to similarities with the general became Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, elected in 2014, even as the army had promised to stay out of politics after the removal of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi from the country. ;last year.
In Algeria, the army has played a central role since the independence of the country in 1962 and was considered the real power holder until the first election of Bouteflika in 1999.
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