Algeria Puts Off Elections; Premier Quits : North Africa: The president declares a state of siege after rioting by Muslim fundamentalists. The army moves in.

ALGIERS â€”  Algerian President Chadli Bendjedid declared a state of siege today, accepted the government’s resignation and postponed general elections.

Tanks and heavily armed soldiers clamped an iron grip on Algiers, the capital, where Muslim fundamentalists demanding an Islamic state threw up barricades overnight after clashes in which at least seven people were killed.

The army, deployed around the city since May 22--three days before the radical Islamic Salvation Front called a general strike--took over key intersections and guarded ministries and vital installations such as the telecommunications center.

Bendjedid said that the country’s general elections, due June 27, have been put off indefinitely. And he said he has accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Mouloud Hamrouche’s government.

The sound of rumbling tanks echoed through the night across the capital, following up the military’s warning last month that its deployment around towns would enable it to “respond better . . . to the demands of the situation.�

At least a dozen camouflaged armored vehicles and scores of troops were stationed near the central communications offices. Another tank and a dozen armed soldiers guarded the Defense Ministry.

More tanks lined streets near the main post office and soldiers, guns at the ready, guarded the intersection. The gun barrels of tanks protruded menacingly from beside other buildings.

The city’s streets were scarred by tank tracks.

The election was to have been the first multi-party Parliament election in Algeria since the country gained independence from France in 1962.

Hamrouche had led a reform program that eased the country’s hard-line Marxist economic and social policies. Bendjedid is the chief of state and supreme authority in Algeria.

In an effort to oust Bendjedid, the Islamic fundamentalists had demanded presidential elections to coincide with the parliamentary elections that were postponed by today’s decree.