BATTLE OF ALGIERS

When the Front de libération nationale FLN) took its war to the streets of the capital, France’s military responded with merciless wrath

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On 20 June 1956, two FLN prisoners were executed by guillotine in the courtyard of Barberousse Prison. The killings marked the beginning of a year-long struggle that came to be known as the Battle of Algiers. This was not, as its name suggests, a set-piece confrontation but rather a protracted guerrilla campaign in the Algerian capital.

Emboldened by the FLN’s growing support, an immediate response to the dual execution was demanded by Saadi Yacef, the FLN’s commander in Algiers, who issued orders to “shoot down any European [aged] 18 to 54. No women, no children, no elders.” A spate of random attacks followed and over the next four days, 49 pied-noir civilians were gunned down in the street. On 10 August, the far-right pied-noir group Union Française Nord-Africaine (UFNA) responded by detonating a bomb inside the Casbah, the city’s densely populated Muslim neighbourhood, killing 73.