Word: tunisian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...market day, and the streets of Sakiet-Sidi-Youssef, a Tunisian village only 700 yards from the Algerian border, were thronged. Shortly before noon, a flight of 25 French military aircraft-mostly U.S.-made fighters and light bombers-swept over the border. In precise military formation, they bombed the town, strafed the streets with machine-gun fire. When the planes turned back to their Algerian bases an hour later, the scabrous little village was a shambles. Nearly 80 dead and 79 wounded were recovered from the rubble. A school was bombed out and 34 children buried in the ruins...
...France unleashed this savage attack on Tunisian civilians? By French report, several reconnaissance aircraft had been fired upon recently by machine guns emplaced in the village outskirts, and so, in the chilly words of France's Defense Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas: "Our aviators did no more than exercise the right of legitimate defense against antiaircraft elements operating from Tunisia with an impunity that was obviously unacceptable." A government spokesman added that he hoped "the Tunisian government would not seek to exaggerate the significance of the incident." Newsmen, stumbling through the rubble and counting the bodies laid out in long...
...France's sudden fit of savagery was a longer-growing irritation with Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba. Increasingly, France blames Bourguiba and his open support of Algeria's F.L.N. for its inability to crush the rebellion. The French have tried to seal off the 500-mile Tunisian border with heavy patrols and an electric fence. But Algerian recruits pour across it for intensive schooling in tactics at Tunisian-based training centers; trained men and equipment pour back to go into action in eastern Algeria...
...Tunisians, offended by the "bellicose tone" of the note, refused to accept it. Next day the Tunisian government declared: "It is inexact that the Algerian elements withdrew into Tunisia with French prisoners." (Best guess as to the truth: the four Frenchmen were whisked into Tunisia for a day or so, then shipped back to a rebel base in Algeria...
...driving little Habib Bourguiba has done his best to keep Tunisia on good terms with France, a month ago even suggested a formal alliance between the two countries. His tiny army is no match for the hard-bitten Algerian forces that have infiltrated Tunisia, and the sympathies of the Tunisian peoples are with the Algerian rebels. If Gaillard brought too much pressure to bear on Tunisia, there was a real danger that Bourguiba might be replaced by someone fanatically hostile not only to France but to the entire West...