Africa News
Algerian independence leader Ben Bella in hospital
Feb 23, 2012, 10:57 GMT
Algiers - Rumours were swirling in Algeria Thursday about the health of the country's founding president, Ahmed Ben Bella, who was admitted to a military hospital in Algiers early the previous day.
The country's official news agency, APS, denied rumours of the former revolutionary's death.
APS quoted an unnamed source close to Ben Bella, 95, as saying his condition was stable at Ain Naadja hospital.
On Wednesday, one of his close friends told APS that the former president had been treated for blood clotting.
Ben Bella was one of the founders of the Revolutionary Committee of Unity and Action, the forerunner to the National Liberation Front, which fought for independence from France.
He spent most of the eight-year Algerian War in a French prison. In 1962 he became the country's first president, but three years later he was ousted from power in a coup.
After several years under house arrest he went into in exile in France and Switzerland.
He returned to Algeria in 1989.
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