Word: bella
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After weeks of bluster and sporadic bloodshed, Algeria's Politburo Chief Ahmed ben Bella last week finally ordered his troops to seize the new nation's rebellious capital...
Within hours, motorized columns carrying 16,000 regular troops were rolling northward along three roads toward Algiers. Then they ran into roadblocks set up by defiant troops of Wilaya 4, the military district that includes Algiers and the surrounding region. As their trucks squealed to a halt, Ben Bella's troops embraced their foes at the barricades and sat down to drink coffee together. "Dear brother," one of Ben Bella's officers would say, "we have orders from the Politburo to advance on Algiers." A wilaya commander would reply: "Dear brother, we are sorry but we have orders...
...ranged a motley collection of lightly armed Wilaya 4 guerrillas, most of them hardly more than boys. Though the regulars were plainly holding back their superior firepower at Boghar, heavy fighting took place near mountainous Aumale, about 60 miles to the east, where determined guerrillas could have stopped Ben Bella's forces for months if they had wished. In all, more than 100 men died and 400 were wounded before the single day's fighting ended in an uneasy truce...
Four wilaya chiefs support the Politburo, headed by volatile Ahmed ben Bella ; so does the 45,000-man regular army commanded by lean, tuberculous Colonel Houari Boumedienne. In opposition are the 20.000 troops of Wilaya 4, which consists of Algiers and the surrounding countryside, and is commanded by a 28-year-old former medical student, Colonel Si Hassan, who has the same Marxist views as his archfoe, Boumedienne. The 10,000 seasoned guerrilla fighters of Wilaya j, covering the rugged mountains of Kaby-lia, also oppose Ben Bella and have promised to come to Si Hassan...
...Italian consul was shot by mistake; the wife of the Swedish consul was raped and robbed - apparently under the impression that she was a Frenchwoman. Complaints by the diplomatic corps were waved aside as coming only from "members of the NATO nations." In a desperate bid for power, Ben Bella last week ordered Boumediejine to use force to liberate Algiers. But it was three days before the first army column crossed into Wilaya 4 and clashed with enemy patrols at Berrouaghia, 75 miles south of Algiers. Ben Bella boasted that the city would fall within 24 hours...