The conflict in Mali has caused nearly 150,000 people to flee the country, while about another 230,000 are internally displaced, the U.N. humanitarian agency said Tuesday.

According to OCHA, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has registered 144,500 refugees in neighboring countries -- 54,100 in Mauritania, 50,000 in Niger, 38,800 in Burkina Faso and 1,500 in Algeria.

Traditionally hostile to foreign interference, Algiers has thrown its support behind operations in Mali against Islamist forces in a surprise about-turn that saw it open its skies to French warplanes.

But some observers say Algeria's change of heart followed a "betrayal" by armed rebel groups in Mali who vowed to cease hostilities last month, and represents a failure of its non-interventionist policy.

The prime ministers of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia decided on Saturday to reinforce border security and join forces tackling regional challenges including terrorism, arms trafficking and organized crime.

The decision was taken by Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali during a meeting in the southern Libyan oasis of Ghadames.

Algeria and Turkey have decided to renew for 10 years from 2014 an agreement for Algeria to deliver four billion cubic meters of gas annually to Turkey, Energy Minister Youcef Yousfi said on Saturday.

The official APS news agency said it was "decided to extend the agreement by 10 years, with the possibility of increasing the volume of gas exported."

The Algerian army has identified one of seven armed Islamists killed east of the capital earlier this month as a key financier of the local affiliate of al-Qaida, the El Watan newspaper reported on Saturday.

Izza Rezki, also known as Abou Djaffar, took up arms against the government in 1994, early in Algeria's devastating civil war, and was a key aide of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) leader Abdelmalek Droukdel, the paper said.

Algerian troops killed seven armed Islamists early Tuesday in a raid in the Boumerdes region east of the capital during which they also seized arms and ammunition, the defense ministry said.

The operation targeted members of a "dangerous" group in the Boulezazen region of Boumerdes some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Algiers, the ministry said in a statement carried by the APS news agency.

A bomb intended to take out soldiers killed two youths from the same family in the restive Bouira region of central Algeria, newspapers said on Thursday.

The two, aged 12 and 14, were on their way home from an olive grove when one of them trod on the explosive device which had been buried in the ground, some reports said. Others said it had been placed in a bag under a tree.

Veteran Algerian dissident Hocine Ait Ahmed is to step down as leader of the Socialist Forces Front which he has led since founding it in 1963, he said in a letter obtained by Agence France Presse on Saturday.

Ait Ahmed, 86, is the sole surviving member of the nationalist leadership that launched the war for independence from French colonial rule on November 1, 1954.

French President Francois Hollande on Thursday acknowledged France's "brutal" colonial rule over the Algerian people, without having to apologize, as he sought to launch a new era in ties on a two-day visit.

"Over 132 years, Algeria was subjected to a profoundly unjust and brutal system," Hollande told the Algerian parliament on the final day of a landmark visit to the North African country, to applause from MPs.

French President Francois Hollande said on Wednesday that he had not come to Algeria to offer "apologies" for crimes committed during the colonial period.

"I have not come here... to offer repentance or apologies. I have come to say what is true," Hollande told a news conference in Algiers, on the first day of his landmark visit to the former French colony.