This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Police have fired teargas to disperse tens of thousands of demonstrators marching through central Algiers against Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term in office, the biggest protest in the Algerian capital since the Arab spring.

Other marches in cities around the country including Oran, Constantine, Sétif, Tizi Ouzou and Bouïra drew thousands more angry at the ailing president’s attempt to prolong his 20 years in power, local media reported.

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Riot police fired teargas to disperse a group of around 200 young people, around 1.5km from the presidential palace in Algiers.

According to a police toll, 56 police and seven demonstrators were hurt and 45 arrests made in the capital. Witnesses reported a number of people wounded after being hit by batons, tear gas grenades and stones thrown by police back at demonstrators who had intially hurled them at officers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Demonstrators in Algiers on Friday. Photograph: Ramzi Boudina/Reuters

Gathering in the capital after Friday prayers, protesters, some carrying roses, chanted “bye bye Bouteflika”, “peaceful, peaceful” and “the people reject Bouteflika and Saïd”, a reference to the 81-year-old president’s brother who is widely believed to be ruling in his name.

“The people want the fall of the regime,” some of those looking to converge at the Place de la Grande Poste in the city centre shouted, in an echo of the Arab spring protests that swept parts of north Africa eight years ago. Police helicopters circled overhead.

“There’s a huge crowd,” said Saïdani Meriem from the opposition party Jil Jadid, sharing photos of streets filled with protesters waving Algerian flags as they marched down the Rue Hassiba Ben Bouali in Algiers, where protests have officially been banned since 2001.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters clash with police in the streets of Algiers on Friday. Photograph: Toufik Doudou/AP

“It’s definitely a historic day,” Meriem said. “The president needs to respond to this mass movement, by first and foremost stopping his power grab.”

Hamdane Salim, a 45-year-old public sector worker, said Algeria’s youth was “demanding a valid president who can talk to the people”.

Nahla Djabi, another marcher, said the protesters were heading “towards the central post office, and from there the presidential palace. The atmosphere is very relaxed, there are plenty of families, women, children. It’s calm for the moment. It’s very joyous. We have hope, a lot of hope.”

Chloe Teevan, a Maghreb specialist at the European Council for Foreign Relations, said many people had taken to the streets even before the end of prayers. “There appear to be tens of thousands. There have been reports of police blocks and some use of teargas, but by and large the protests are proceeding peacefully,” she said.

Bouteflika’s opponents say the president, who has been seen in public only a handful of times since he suffered a serious stroke in 2013, is no longer fit to lead and that Algeria is being run by a group of advisers, including Saïd.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A protester in Algiers makes her feelings known. Photograph: Fateh Gudoum/AP

Authorities insist the president, who came to power in 1999, still has a firm grip on public affairs. “Bouteflika was sick when he sought a fourth term in 2014, but his medical results for the past five years were good,” the prime minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, told parliament on Thursday.

Bouteflika flew to Switzerland on Sunday for what his office called routine medical checks in the run-up to the election. Presidential candidates must pass a medical aptitude test and can be declared ineligible if they fail.

The wave of mass protests in more than 30 cities began last Friday after the president’s National Liberation Front confirmed him as its candidate in the 18 April election. It appears to have broken a longstanding taboo against national public dissent in Algeria.

The Mouwatana opposition group faces significant hurdles in mounting an effective challenge, with Bouteflika having already secured the endorsement of several political parties, trade unions and business groups and no obvious successor apparent in Algeria’s opaque politics.

A veteran of Algeria’s independence struggle against the colonial power, France, Bouteflika is credited with helping to end the country’s decade-long civil war between government forces and Islamist militants, in which an estimated 200,000 people died, in 2002.

Many Algerians have since tolerated a restrictive political regime and omnipresent state security service in exchange for relative calm and stability. The scale of this week’s protests, despite the reluctance of both the state broadcaster and private channels owned by pro-government media magnates to cover them, has taken observers by surprise.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Algerian demonstrators tear down a large billboard depicting the country’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, on 22 February. Photograph: Ryad Kramdi/AFP/Getty Images

Police briefly detained at least 15 journalists at a protest in Algiers on Thursday, driving them to a police station before releasing them hours later. State media only started covering the protests on Tuesday after journalists publicly complained they were being prevented from doing so.

The TSA Algérie news outlet and the journalist Moncef Ait-Kaci both reported on social media that the Algerian communications ministry had prevented some channels from filming Friday’s demonstrations.

“There were orders from the ministry of communications that live broadcasts from outside are completely forbidden, for any channel that could broadcast abroad. Foreign channels can only broadcast live from inside a studio,” said Hamza Zait, a journalist and political scientist in Algiers.

The internet monitoring organisation NetBlocks said it was investigating reports of outages and reduced upload speeds, preventing the distribution of photos and video.

Ouyahia, who promised the vote would be supervised by 400 international election monitors, compared the growing protest movement to the peaceful demonstrations that erupted in Syria and sparked a bitter conflict that is now nearing its ninth year.

Some Algerian demonstrators were “offering roses to the policemen”, the prime minister said. “But we should recall that in Syria it also began with roses.” This prompted an angry response from opposition deputies.

Ouyahia said peaceful protests were among the rights enshrined in the Algerian constitution, but warned against unnamed outside forces who could “manipulate” demonstrators. More protests are scheduled for Sunday when Bouteflika is expected to formally file his bid to enter the electoral race.

More than a quarter of Algerians under 30 are unemployed, according to official figures, and many feel disconnected from a ruling elite still composed of veteran fighters from Algeria’s 1954-62 war of independence.