Argentina President Cristina Kirchner held talks with her Algerian counterpart Sunday during a two-day visit aimed at bolstering trade and which is part of a tour of northern Africa.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika welcomed Kirchner when she arrived in the late morning before the face-to-face talks that preceded discussions between the two country`s delegations.

ALGIERS, Nov 17, 2007 (AFP) - A gas explosion in an old house in eastern Algeria killed six people and injured another eight Saturday, emergency services said.

The blast levelled the two-storey building in an old quarter of Annaba, 600 kilometres (375 miles) east of Algiers, killing two women, one of them pregnant, a man and three children.

One of the eight injured was in serious condition, the emergency services added.

MADRID, Oct 21, 2007 (AFP) - One of the alleged masterminds of the 2004 Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people, has died in Iraq while fighting US-led coalition forces, a Spanish daily said Sunday.

Spain was informed several months ago of Daoud Ouhnane's death in Iraq in October or November 2006 by foreign intelligence agencies, El Pais newspaper said, quoting a confidential police report.

ALGIERS, Oct 20, 2007 (AFP) - France handed over to Algeria Saturday details of where its forces laid millions of landmines on the country's eastern and western borders half-a-century ago, the French embassy in Algiers said.

'General Jean-Louis Georgelin, chief of the armed forces general staff, officially delivered to his Algerian counterpart, Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaid Salah, the plans of minefields laid ... by the French army between 1956 and 1959,' an embassy statement said.

BAMAKO, Oct 18, 2007 (AFP) - Government officials from north and northwest Africa will to meet in Mali's capital Bamako to tackle security concerns in the region, Foreign Minister Moctar Ouane said on Thursday.

Ouane, quoted by local radio stations, said the planned talks will focus on peace, security and development in the region at the initiative of Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure.

The region concerned comprises Algeria, Burkina Faso Faso, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco and Niger.

ALGIERS, Oct 15, 2007 (AFP) - Battles and attacks involving Islamists and Algerian security forces left four Islamists and a policeman dead, a security source told AFP on Monday.

Four armed Islamists were killed on Saturday by security forces near the town of Thenia in the Boumerdes region, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Algiers, according to the same source.

ALGER, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - Algerian security forces killed the deputy leader of the Maghreb offshoot of Al-Al Qaeda in a clash in the east of the country, newspapers reported Wednesday.

Zobeir Harkat, who was better known as Sofiane Fassila, was killed Sunday in fighting in the troubled Kabylie region, said the reports, which were not immediately confirmed by authorities.

PARIS, Oct 10, 2007 (AFP) - A new film described as France's 'Platoon' tackles the savagery of the Algerian war, broaching a topic that until recently remained taboo and helping France face the demons of its colonial past.

'L'Ennemi Intime' (Intimate Enemy) from director Florent-Emilio Siri is the first big-budget Hollywood-style film that combines action scenes and psychological drama about France's 'dirty war' in Algeria from 1954 to 1962.

ALGIERS, Oct 9, 2007 (AFP) - Three soldiers were killed and five wounded east of Algiers on the weekend when two bombs went off as an army convoy drove by, a security source said Tuesday.

The bombs, triggered by remote control, went off on Sunday as the convoy passed in the Boumerdes region, 50 kilometres (31 miles) east of the capital.

The soldiers were on their way to their camp to break their Ramadan fasting, said the source.

ALGIERS, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - Two Algerian television journalists charged with broadcasting blasphemous cartoons of the prophet Mohammed have been acquitted by a criminal court, a judicial official said Monday.

The state prosecutor had demanded a five year prison sentence for journalists Lotfi Chriet and Houria Khater and two years for the technicians involved in the broadcast by the two public television stations Canal Algeria and A3.