A retired Algerian intelligence chief, formerly in charge of counter-terrorism, is being held in a military prison after his arrest in Algiers, the daily El-Watan reported Sunday.

After being forcibly retired at the end of 2013, "General Hassan", born Abdelkader Ait-Ouarab, was arrested at his home on Thursday and is being held in Blida military prison 50 km (31 miles) south of Algiers, the newspaper said.

The Algerian military has killed two armed Islamists who had been active for more than 20 years, the defense ministry announced Thursday.

The two "dangerous terrorists" were killed in an ambush late Tuesday in the Jijel region, around 300 kilometers (180 miles) east of Algiers, it said on its website.

Three people including a teenager have died in flooding as torrential rain swept homes, shops and offices in southeastern Algeria, authorities said on Tuesday.

Two of the victims, a tailor and a seamstress, were found dead in their workshop, and the 16-year-old is believed to have been killed by a short circuit, a civil defence official said.

Algerian soldiers have killed two Islamist gunmen in an operation east of the capital, the defense ministry announced on Sunday.

It said in a statement that the men were killed on Saturday by the army some 500 kilometers (310 miles) east of Algiers near Skikda. 

Italian border police have detained an Algerian human rights lawyer who is the subject of an international arrest warrant but who lives in Switzerland as a political refugee, Italian media said Friday.

Rachid Mesli was held on Wednesday as he crossed the Great St-Bernard border tunnel by car from Switzerland with his wife and one of his three children.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has replaced three senior army officers with responsibilities for domestic security matters and for his own security, the media reported Saturday.

The three, all major generals, headed the North African nation's counter-espionage unit, presidential security and the Republican Guard, the newspapers El-Watan and Liberte and television channel Ennahar reported.

Families of victims of an Air Algerie plane that crashed a year ago on Friday gathered in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, to commemorate the tragedy, asking that unidentified victims' remains be flown from Mali for burial.

Solemn commemorations began Thursday to mark the July 24, 2014 crash that killed all 116 people on board, including 54 French nationals, with families laying flowers at a cemetery west of the Burkinabe capital.

Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal on Tuesday pledged a "relentless" hunt for the killers of at least nine soldiers caught in an ambush claimed by al-Qaeida's North Africa branch.

"There will be a relentless pursuit of these terrorists," Sellal said during a visit to Madrid, referring to Friday's attack on an army patrol in Djebel Louh in Ain Defla province, 140 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of Algiers.

Al-Qaida's North African branch claimed an ambush of an Algerian army patrol that killed at least nine soldiers, in one of the deadliest such attacks in years.

The assault took place in Djebel Louh in Ain Defla province, 140 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of Algiers, on Friday night at the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Eleven soldiers were killed in an overnight ambush carried out by suspected Islamists in a wooded region southwest of the Algerian capital, El Khaber newspaper reported Saturday on its website.

There was no immediate confirmation of the incident from the defense ministry, but it was widely circulated on websites and social media.