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Algerian government officials are set to meet on Saturday to finds ways to halt a rise in the costs of basic food items that sparked protests in the capital and other towns this week.
An inter-ministerial council would in particular look at laws related to competition and commercial practice, and the definition of profit margins, Mustapha Benbada, the country's commerce minister, said.
Ministry officials and producers were also due to meet to make input into new regulations on profits, Benbada said.
At least one person was reported dead after clashes between protesters and police turned violent.
The El Khabar newspaper, citing local sources, said that one young man had been killed in clashes on Friday in the city of Msila, about 250km southeast of the capital.
Azzedine Labz died instantly, hit by a bullet after the intervention of security forces who tried to prevent protesters ransack buildings public in the town of Ain El Hadjel, the paper reported.
Shots fired
Security forces tried to prevent protestors from entering the headquarters of Ain El Hadjel post office and the municipal council, but the protesters challenged them and broke into both offices.
Young protesters pelted police with stones and blocked access to the area.
As a result, police fired and shot dead Labz, while three others were transferred to a clinic in the same municipality.
Police were deployed outside mosques and a university in Algiers on Friday after fresh rioting had erupted the previous night.
Elsewhere, protesters clashed with police in Annaba, a coastal city 500km east of Algiers, on Friday following the afternoon prayer, the Algerian daily newspaper El-Watan reported.
Protests continued in Oran in the west on Friday, where the protests first began two nights ago.
Meanwhile, France has called on its nationals in Algeria or those travelling there to be careful of the possibility of "major unrest" there.
Hachemi Djiar, the Algerian youth and sports minister, said on Friday that "violence has never brought results, either in Algeria or elsewhere, and our young people know that".
Protests were also reported in the cities of Annaba and Laghouat, 700km south of Algiers, witnesses said.
But cities with oil or gas facilities are calm for now.
"In Hassi Messaoud, it is business as usual. All is quiet here," a resident told Reuters news agency.
Oil threatened
Hassi Messaoud is Algeria's biggest oil field producing an estimated 300,000 barrels per day.
Analysts say the protests are still far from dragging the oil and gas-producing nation back to the sort of political upheaval of the 1990s that caused 10 years of civil strife.
Hundreds of youths clashed with police in several Algerian cities earlier this week, and ransacked stores in the capital.
On Wednesday, riot police used tear gas to disperse youths in the Algiers neighborhood of Bab el-Oued, where the most violent of the protests occurred.
The Algerian Soccer Federation postponed Friday's league fixtures to prevent the organization of rallies, which the country has banned under emergency law in force since 1992.
The cost of flour and salad oil has doubled in the past few months, reaching record highs, and 1kg of sugar, which a few months ago cost 70 dinars (27 US cents), is now 150 dinars.
Unemployment stands at about 10 per cent, the government says, but independent organizations put it closer to 25 per cent.
Official data put inflation at 4.2 per cent in November.
Political unrest
Salima Ghezali, a leading Algerian journalist and human rights activist, told Al Jazeera that the outbreak of protests is "both very local and very global".
Algerians have followed protests over economic dissatisfaction not only in neighboring Tunisia, but also in Europe.
At the same time, she said the rioting is a consequence of years of economic and political mismanagement.
Although hardly a week goes by without geographically specific protests over particular incidents, she said that the nationwide movement that has sprung up this week is very different.
"This is affecting a large part of the Algerian territory," she said.
Asked if this week's rioting is comparable to the October 1988 demonstrations that forced the government to grant wider media freedom and hold the country's first democratic elections (which were subsequently halted by the military), she said the current political situation is far grimmer.
"Unlike in 1988, the country today is deeply traumatized," she said, referring to the "dirty war" of the 1990s that left 200,000 people dead and an estimated 20,000 forcibly disappeared.
There has never been any investigations into the alleged war crimes committed by all sides during this civil war.
PHOTO CAPTION
A riot police officer fires tear gas at protesters during clashes in Belcourd district of the capital Algiers January 7, 2011.
Al-Jazeera
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