Algeria's powerful military chief Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah, who was instrumental in pushing out the gas-rich country's long-serving president amid pro-democracy
protests earlier this year, died unexpectedly Monday.
Gaid Salah's death thrusts Algeria into new political uncertainty as a tumultuous year comes to a close.
Gaid Salah, a product of the old guard that won Algeria's independence from
France in 1962 after a brutal seven-year war, died Monday morning in the military hospital of Algiers after a heart attack, according to state radio and state news agency APS.