Word: casbah
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...rebel commanders in Algeria, none has given the French more trouble than handsome Yacef Saadi, the 29-year-old ex-baker who for nearly two years hcs been chief of the FLN (Algerian National Liberation Front) in the city of Algiers. Within the labyrinthine depths of Algiers' Casbah, Yacef and his mistress, an Algerian law student named Zohra Drif, were uncrowned monarchs. Under the very nose of French police and paratroopers, Yacef collected "taxes," dispensed his own justice, and organized the bloody bombing attacks of cafés and streets that have kept Algiers' French edgy for months...
...clock one morning last week, Yacef's baraka ran out. Acting on an informer's tip, green-bereted paratroopers of the Foreign Legion rushed into the Casbah and smashed in the door of No. 3 Rue Caton. As Paratrooper Lieut. Colonel Jean Pierre and one of his sergeants broke in, Yacef and his girl friend Zohra scrambled through a trapdoor into a secret chamber above the stairwell of the house. Before he slammed the trapdoor shut, Yacef cut loose with a burst of machine-gun fire, then tossed down a hand grenade that went off in the paratroopers...
...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...
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...
...Casbah. Hot-tempered students and war veterans ordered a general protest strike. Roaming the city in small commando units, some on motor scooters with girl friends behind, they forced shopkeepers out of stores, stopped buses and trolleys, ordering passengers to descend, poured into post offices, telling employees to quit or be beaten up. Police looked on. The riot fever reached its peak following the burial of Singer Carmen Ramos. Some 1,500 teen-agers started back to town after the ceremony, shouting "Algeria is French!"-"Death to the Assassins!" Joined by other Europeans-gangs of poor Italians and Spaniards from...