TIZI OUZOU, March 31: Rioting broke out on Wednesday when Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika took his re-election campaign to this flashpoint city in the restive Kabylie region, homeland of the nation's Berber minority.

In the most serious incident since official campaigning for the April 8 vote began on March 18, protesters clashed with soldiers outside a cultural centre where President Bouteflika held a campaign rally under heavy security.

The protesters' presence forced Bouteflika to leave the venue from a hidden exit, witnesses said, adding that the president's car had been stoned as he arrived in the city.

Police fired teargas and used water cannon to disperse the protesters, most of them local youths. Barricades had been set up on some of the main streets in the city centre and in the Genets neighbourhood, a hotbed of anti-government sentiment.

Mr Bouteflika, 67, travels widely around the north African country, and has stepped up his visits in recent months. The president, however, has not visited Tizi Ouzou since Sept 1999 when he was promoting a reconciliation programme in his bid to end Algeria's bloody civil war, a conflict that has claimed more than 150,000 lives. -AFP