An Algerian military cargo plane traveling with six people on board from Paris to Algiers went down in flames Friday in a mountainous region of southern France, officials said.

Around 60 firefighters were at the scene of the accident in a forest clearing near the village of Trelans, the fire service said without providing details on the number of victims, the cause of the crash, or the type of plane.

Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine has said it is prepared to distance itself from al-Qaida's North Africa branch, a newspaper said on Saturday, a day after sending a delegation to Algiers for peace talks.

Ansar Dine's leader Iyad Ag Ghaly "would be ready to officially distance himself from AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) and play the 'democracy' game," El-Watan reported, citing an Algerian official.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Algeria on Monday, with the political crisis in neighboring Mali a central focus of her scheduled talks with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Clinton's plane touched down shortly before 0530 GMT at Algiers international airport at the start of her second visit to the Algerian capital following a trip last year.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will leave Washington Sunday to travel to Algeria, for discussions on the Mali crisis, before joining EU diplomatic chief Catherine Ashton in the Balkans.

The State Department said Clinton will meet Tuesday with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, which shares a long border with Mali where extremists and rebel groups have taken over large swathes of the country's north after a coup in March.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb's supremo has appointed a new deputy and relieved Mokhtar Belmokhtar, one of two top commanders in northern Mali, security sources said.

"Abdelmalek Droukdel has appointed Yahya Abou El Hamame as 'emir of the Sahel' to replace Nabil" Makhloufi, a Malian security official told AFP on condition of anonymity late Sunday.

An Algerian court on Monday handed Yaseen Zaid, a human rights activist, a suspended six-month prison sentence and fined him $130 for verbally assaulting policemen, his lawyers said.

"The judge gave Yaseen Zaid a suspended six-month prison sentence and a fine of 10,000 Algerian dinars ($130, 100 euros)," Amine Sidhoum, a member of his legal team, told Agence France Presse.

Mauritania and Algeria have called for dialogue in a bid to reach a political solution to the six-month-old crisis in neighboring Mali, after ruling out sending troops there to battle Islamist militia.

"Both countries agree on the importance of dialogue for the emergence of political solutions to the crisis in Mali," Abdelkader Messahel, Algeria's minister for Maghreb and African affairs, said in Nouakchott late Sunday.

Algeria's former long-time president Chadli Bendjedid, acclaimed for having introduced democracy to government institutions, died of cancer on Saturday aged 83, APS news agency reported.

Bendjedid had been admitted to the Ain Naajda military hospital in Algiers more than a week ago. He was hospitalized in Paris last January for cancer treatment and returned to hospital for brief spells in May and October.

Storms sweeping across northeast Algeria have killed 20 people and injured 56, the state news agency APS on Sunday cited emergency services as saying.

It said nine people died when torrential rain and high winds hit the regions of Tebessa 600 kilometers (360 miles) east of Algiers, Tlemcen (600 kilometers west of the capital) and M'sila (250 kilometers to its south).

Nearly four tons of cannabis with a street value of around 1.6 million euros ($2 million) have been seized in Algeria near border with Morocco, customs officials said on Sunday.

The seizure came overnight after customs officers pursued a vehicle that was then abandoned outside the town of Tlemcen, Algeria's APS state news agency reported, citing officials.