MASSACRE IN ALGERIA

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28700, 25 September 1958, Page 20

MASSACRE IN ALGERIA

News Given By Rebel

(Rec. 8 p.m.) ALGIERS, Sept. 23. The first news of the slaughter of 400 Algerian Moslems in an isolated spot in the rugged Kabylie Mountains east of Algeria came from an insurgent who feared the same fate, according to reports reaching Algiers today. A secretary of “Colonel” Mohammed Amirouche, commander of Vilaya (insurgent disstrict) No. 3, which covers the Kabylie area, asked French officers in Tizi-Ouzou, 50 miles east of Algiers: “Protect me from the killers. I am suspect. I do not want to finish like the rest.” He said Amirouche had killed more than 700 insurgents in a purge which began in June. “In one night I saw more than 80 fighters executed by a tribunal headed by Amirouche. Four thousand French troops went into the mountains and after minor clashes with insurgents found, spread over more than half a mile, a vast charnel house of over 400 burned and mutilated bodies in the Afkadou forest near the Soumman river. One soldier reported: “It was a terrible sight. Bodies partially buried had been dug up at night by jackals. The bodies were mutilated, most had their throats cut. others were riddled with bullets, and some were burned.”