Algerian authorities have arrested 38 people in connection with deadly ethnic unrest between Berbers and Arabs in the south of the country, police and the gendarmerie said Friday.

Police also said a hunting rifle, dozens of knives and Molotov cocktails were seized during a probe into unrest in the southern province of Ghardaia that left 22 people dead on Tuesday.

Algeria was mobilizing the army on Thursday after 22 people were killed in the worst ethnic clashes between Berbers and Arabs in years, as more details emerged of the violence.

The fighting erupted late on Tuesday in the town of Guerara in the M'zab valley, a UNESCO world heritage site on the edge of the Sahara that has seen mounting tensions between its Berber and Arab communities.

Like many women in Algeria infected by their husbands with HIV, 30-year-old Sihem is a victim twice over, living with her disease and suffering as a social outcast.

Infected by her husband at age 20, Sihem has spent a decade living with the stigma that comes with being infected with HIV in Algeria.

At least 22 people have died in clashes between Berber and Arab communities in southern Algeria on the edge of the Sahara desert, the national news agency APS reported Wednesday.

It was the bloodiest toll in two years of frequent clashes between the communities.

More than 100 armed Islamists have been killed, captured or have repented in Algeria in the first half of this year, the defense ministry said Tuesday.

A statement, carried by national news agency APS, did not give a breakdown of the 102 Islamists it said were no longer battling Algerian security forces.

Algerian troops have killed two armed Islamists in an ambush in Tizi Ouzou province, east of the capital, the defense ministry said Tuesday.

They recovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a pistol and ammunition in the operation, which occurred Monday in the municipality of Azzeffoun, the ministry said on its website.

A Libyan jihadist group denied Tuesday that Al-Qaida-linked militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar -- the man behind multiple deadly attacks with a history of coming back from the dead -- was killed in a US air strike.

Ansar al-Sharia named seven people it said were killed in the U.S. strike in eastern Libya but Belmokhtar, who Washington has said was the target, was not among them.

French President Francois Hollande arrived Monday in Algeria for a visit aimed at tackling the "common battle" of the once bitter foes against jihadists from Mali to Libya.

His trip comes after Libya's internationally recognized government said the jihadist mastermind of the 2013 siege of an Algerian gas plant in which 38 hostages died had been killed in a U.S. air strike.

Al-Qaida-linked jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who allegedly masterminded the siege of an Algerian gas plant in which 38 hostages died, has been killed in a U.S. air strike, Libya's internationally recognized government said.

"American jets conducted an operation which resulted in the deaths of Mokhtar Belmokhtar and a group of Libyans belonging to a terrorist organization in eastern Libya," said a statement posted on Facebook.

French President Francois Hollande heads to Algeria on Monday as the two nations, once bitter foes, work ever closer to resolve the political turmoil and jihadist threat in Mali and Libya.

The trip will be Hollande's second to Algiers since a 2012 visit during which he recognized France's century of "brutal" rule over the Algerian people which ended in a bloody independence war.