The jihadist group led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar that claimed twin suicide car bombings in Niger that killed at least 20 people threatened on Friday to launch further attacks in the country.

"We will launch further operations" in Niger, the group said in a statement posted on Islamist Internet forums that also threatened France and countries involved militarily in battling Islamist extremists in Mali.

Hospitalized Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is recovering well in Paris and will return home soon, Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci said on Wednesday.

"The president is in good health; he will return soon to Algeria. For the moment he is still in France for a few days of recovery," Medelci told Radio France Internationale (RFI).

Veteran Algerian dissident Hocine Ait Ahmed is too ill to attend a congress of his Socialist Forces Front (FFS) later this week, the first he has missed since he founded it 50 years ago, organizers said on Tuesday.

Ait Ahmed's doctors have advised him against travelling to Algeria for the congress from his longtime base in Switzerland, organizing committee co-chairman Mohamed Amokrane Cherifi told Agence France Presse.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has been transferred to a new facility in Paris to continue his recovery after treatment in a French military hospital, France's defense ministry said Tuesday.

Bouteflika, 76, was flown to the Val de Grace hospital in Paris three weeks ago following a mini-stroke and speculation has been rife about the state of his health.

Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal on Monday broke official silence on the health of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, saying he is convalescing in Paris after a mini-stroke and was "never in danger".

"I would like to reassure our compatriots on the state of health of the president of the republic... he was never in danger and his health is improving day by day," Sellal said in a statement carried by the APS news agency.

An Algerian court sentenced 14 Malian members of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) to 20 years' jail for arms smuggling and entering the country illegally, El Khabar daily reported Monday.

The Malians, who were sentenced on Sunday by the criminal court in the southern town of Ouargla, were accused of entering Algeria illegally with a shipment of weapons from Libya, the Arabic-language daily said.

A 5.5-magnitude earthquake on Sunday struck Algeria's Bejaia region, 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Algiers, injuring five people and damaging some houses, the APS news agency said, citing medics.

"There are no serious cases -- the victims are mainly suffering from trauma," a medic said.

Algeria censored two dailies over reports that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, hospitalized in Paris since April 27, will return home in a coma after his health took a turn for the worse, their chief said on Sunday.

The reports in the two newspapers referred to a "deterioration" in Bouteflika's health, said managing editor Hichem Aboud, citing French medical sources and relatives of the Algerian president.

Press reports warned Thursday that Tunisia was "at war with international terrorism" after the government revealed that jihadists being pursued by the army have ties to al-Qaida and the Islamist rebellion in Mali.

French-language daily Le Temps raised fears of "a spiral of deadly violence similar to the one that ravaged Algeria" during its so-called black decade of civil war in the 1990s.

Algerian soldiers killed seven armed Islamists overnight in two separate operations in the restive Tizi Ouzou and Bouira provinces, east of Algiers, the defense ministry announced on Wednesday.

Four Islamists were killed during an ambush carried out in Aghrib, in the Tizi Ouzou region, the ministry said in a statement carried by the national APS news agency.