Two people have been killed and hundreds injured in continuing protests in Algeria, as the government meets to discuss ways of halting the rising food costs and unemployment that have sparked the unrest.
At least 300 of the 400 people injured in the riots were police officers, Dahou Oul Kablia , Algeria's interior minister, said on national radio on Saturday.
One of the two men killed was named as 18-year-old Azzedine Lebza. He was shot dead in Ain Lahdjel in the M'Sila region, 300km from Algiers, the capital.
"He died in an attempt to break into a police station," Kablia said, confirming the incident reported earlier by the Arab-language daily El Khabar.
A second demonstrator was killed on Friday in Bou Smail, a small town 50km west of Algiers, he said.
"He was picked up in the street, wounded. A pathologist said he had died from wounds to the head, but the cause of death has not yet been established."