Day of anger and roads cut

The housing crisis led to popular unrest in Oran and the police use tear gas. A citizen attempts suicide before being arrested.

• The province of Oran has experienced yesterday morning popular protests triggered by the housing crisis in the municipalities of Oran and Guediel. If in the latter, the events had taken place without problems, victims have been recorded in the first.
  Local authorities in the town of Oran, accompanied by the gendarmerie and officials of forest conservation, carried out the demolition of 25 illegal houses built inside the forest area of the neighbourhood of “Koka.” This operation comes as part of the cleaning of state assets from slums. This gave rise to problems caused by slum dwellers and which resulted in four injuries. Police have arrested a man who tried to commit suicide by dousing himself with gasoline in order to stop the demolition of his house. The police had to use tear gas to evacuate homes that people refused to leave. Some houses were then demolished with furniture inside amid the screams and crying of women and children.
  The inhabitants of the slum, some fifty fathers of families whose houses were not yet demolished promised to raise the tone of their protest if their houses are destroyed.
  According to source from the conservation of forests, these homes were built there in just two years, others have been there for six months, while data showed the demolition of 250 homes last year in the region of Kouka.
  In Guediel, it is the excluded from the quota of 173 social housing who gathered outside the headquarters of the Daïra yesterday to denounce the list of beneficiaries, whom they said includes only employees of the municipality and the Daïra and people who are not eligible.
  
  

• Ennahar / Meriem Mameri / Zakia K.

• Citizens cut the road in Ain Oulmane

• The Daïra of Ain Oulmane, south of the province of Setif experienced last night a wave of protest from many citizens who came from various towns. These latter cut the NR 28 to protest against their exclusion from the list of beneficiaries of housing and the unfair policy of local officials about how the case was handled. The inhabitants of Berbes have paralyzed traffic until late in the night and this, by using stones and setting fire to tires.

• Sit-in outside the headquarters of the town hall in Bouarfa, Blida

   

• The inhabitants of the region of Memiche, Erramli and Hamlili neighbourhoods, in the Municipality of Bouarfa in Blida, gathered outside the headquarters of the town hall since the early hours of the day to protest against the different problems and the precarious conditions in which they live for years.

• Ennahar / A. Adel

• Slum dwellers in Kouba threaten to set fire to public buildings

• The inhabitants of the slums “Grégorie” and the farm “Mohamed Kadri” in Kouba cut the road using tires to which they set fire and destroyed power poles, accusing the municipality of having excluded them from public housing in 2007.

• The relocation operation that began last week and ends late in 2010 did not affect them while they are living there for over 50 years, according to their statements

• Ennahar