Word: oran
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...presence" in Algeria. Conceived by Napoleon III and completed under the supervision of Marshal Louis Lyautey, greatest of France's North African proconsuls, the Colomb-Béchar-Ain-Sefra line is the southernmost portion of a railroad that runs all the way from the Mediterranean port of Oran to the rim of the Sahara...
Under this bombardment, the train's former passengers have taken to flying, and the coal once carried to Oran from the mines of Colomb-Béchar is now diverted by way of Morocco. But for the prestige-conscious French, the train must chuff on. Once a week it sets forth from Colomb-Béchar, but only after two regiments of Foreign Legionnaires and Senegalese have inspected every inch of the line...
...desert, where no man can hide from the hovering helicopter, there is no trouble from the rebel fellagha, but the wild Atlas Mountains, which bar all routes northward from the oilfield, shelter some of the toughest Moslem rebel gangs. On the final 150-mile stretch of the railroad from Oran there have been continuous attacks by rebels for a year. In one night the line was cut by explosions in 45 places: it must be de-mined every morning before a train can leave. Fortnight ago rebels burned a power station at Laghouat, a vital point on an oilfield road...
...made its bloody point: after Kasba Mechta, any village in Algeria will think twice before welcoming French patrols or refusing to contribute support and money to the FLN rebels. To make the lesson doubly plain, the FLN deliberately repeated the lesson with the men of two tiny communities near Oran, tortured and killed 36, wounded...
...Year's Day a bomb exploded in Algiers' swankiest hotel. Others were tossed at cafés all over Algeria; cyclists were machine-gunned on the road. The one-day total: 13 killed, 23 wounded. Next day, after a local train was derailed east of Oran, rescuers found the bodies of six Europeans in the wreckage; two of the women had been raped and disemboweled...