• U.S.

NORTH AFRICA: Algeria: Death

3 minute read
TIME

No matter how glamorous Charles Boyer made it seem, the Casbah in Algiers is a squalid slum overpopulated by 80,000 natives, where pimps and petty thieves dart about labyrinthian alleyways, secret passages and connecting rooftops. It is also a prime hideout for terrorists of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). From its recesses they fan out to plant bombs, stab and shoot, wreaking vengeance on Frenchman and moderate Arab alike. So far this year their bombs have killed 47 civilians, wounded 263 others; as a result, anyone now entering a bus. store or cinema in Algiers is automatically searched for arms or bombs.

Despite wholesale roundups and roughhousing “routine checks” on the entire male population of the Casbah, the French have never managed to dominate its inner fastnesses. Last week they announced proudly that the trick had been done. Helped by hooded native informers, the French claim to have arrested the top men in FLN’s justice, medical, propaganda and intelligence sections in Algiers. All are under 30. Last week French paratroopers found the trail of two of FLN’s top terrorists—Mourad, 27, a mechanic turned bombmaker, and Ramel, 26, a 250-lb. onetime Zouave in the French army, who plotted rebel forays from the Casbah. Led to the spot by a native informer, two companies of French paratroopers boxed in Mourad and Ramel on the third floor of a once ornate, four-story, Turkish-style house in the Casbah. Firing, their burp guns, the two rebels held out for an hour. Then one shouted. “We’ll surrender, but only if Bigeard signs a safe-conduct saying that we won’t be tortured.” Down in the street, tough French Paratroop Colonel Marcel Bigeard ordered a ceasefire, and then watched as the terrorists lowered a small bundle by string to the street. Two French officers and a noncom walked over to inspect this “token of surrender”; it blew up. wounding all three and narrowly missing Bigeard.

For two hours more, while terrified Moslems in the area shrieked and scattered to safety, the siege went on. The rebels dropped six more bombs, killed two French soldiers, wounded three others. At last Ramel, already wounded, made a dash for the street and was shot dead. Then with a homemade bomb Mourad blew up himself, Ramel’s 20-year-old mistress and most of the house.

The French government trumpeted a victory, and cited it as evidence for Minister Resident Robert Lacoste’s chronic boast that the Algiers revolt is in “its last quarter of an hour.” But a more realistic French colonel in Algiers said ruefully. “Every time we get one rebel, we know he is immediately replaced by another.”

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com