ALGIERS, Algeria (AFP) -- Algeria's national police chief was shot dead Thursday during a blazing row with a subordinate in his office in central Algiers, the interior ministry said.

Colonel Ali Tounsi was holding a meeting in his office when a police official "apparently overcome by a fit of madness" drew out his service pistol and shot him dead at 10:45 am, the ministry said in a statement.

The killer -- identified by local media as the head of the Algerian police's helicopter unit -- then turned his gun on himself and was taken to hospital for treatment to his wounds, which were serious, the ministry said.

Police had begun an investigation "to establish the circumstances of this painful incident", the ministry said.

Arabic language daily El Khabar said the official, named in media reports as Chouib Woustache, opened fire after confronting Tounsi over reports the chief was planning to sack him.

Several newspapers said an inquiry ordered by Tounsi into bribery allegations involving helicopter parts suppliers had implicated the gunman.

"The perpetrator did not accept the conclusions of this inquiry and wasn't ready to submit to any administrative sanction or be subjected to prosecution. He acted after getting wind that he was about to be fired," the Arabic-language Echorouk daily said in its online edition.

The El Watan daily said on its website that the disgruntled official also fired on other colleagues present at the meeting, but there has been no official confirmation of this.

Algeria's Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni paid tribute to the "fiery patriotism" of Tounsi, who took the job in 1994 when Algeria was in the grip of a struggle to tackle an Islamist insurgency.

"Tounsi gave his whole life to the service of his nation, to the anti-terrorist campaign over the past 16 years and to the modernisation of national security," the minister said.

Tounsi made the Algerian police the lynchpin of the country's struggle against violent extremism, particularly in urban areas.

Police stepped up security in Algiers following suicide car bomb attacks in 2007, launched by the north African wing of Al-Qaeda.

Roadblocks were set up on the city's main roads, and Algiers has not suffered an Islamist attack for more than two years now.

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