De Gaulle Supporters In Algiers Resign

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28888, 7 May 1959, Page 15

De Gaulle Supporters In Algiers Resign

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

(Rec. 10 p.m.) ALGIERS, May 6. The Public Safety Committee in Algiers which led the uprising a year ago that brought General de Gaulle to power in France is today split apart over General de Gaulle’s “soft” Algerian policy.

Seven members of the committee resigned yesterday after pro-Gaullists on the committee had vetoed plans to declare the anniversary of the rising on May 13 a day of mourning in Algeria. Those who resigned said President de Gaulle had not fulfilled the aims he proclaimed last May.

The differences in the committee are so acute that the committee will probably disband.

A mob of angry European! youths gathered in Constantine today for the second day in succession to shout slogans hostile to President de Gaulle, the American Associated Press reported. Shopkeepers pulled down steel shutters. The anti de Gaulle shouts came after several thousand European residents of Constantine formed a funeral procession accompanying the body of 16-year-old Helene Serio to a cemetery. She and two young men were killed by Algerian nationalist rebels in an ambush near the city on Saturday night. At the funeral of the young men yesterday, a gang of Europeans broke away from the procession to attack Moslems and tear up pictures of President de Gaulle.

ATROCITY BY FRENCH?

Killings In Cave Alleged

(Rec. 11 p.m.) TUNIS, May 6. Algerian nationalists yesterday accused the French Army of cornering 112 Moslem civilians in a cave and suffocating them with smoke grenades.

The incident allegedly occurred last month in the village of Douar Terchioui near Macmahon, 90 miles south-west of Constantine in eastern Algeria. British United Press said the charge was made in the political bulletin of the Algerian “Government in exile’s” Ministry of Information in Tunis In Cairo, Tewfik el Medani, Minister of Culture in the selfproclaimed “Algerian Provisional Government,” told an Arab graduates’ conference last night that the Algerians were losing about 500 men a day in the struggle against France. The total dead since the insurrection began in 1954 was 750.000. But he said the Algerian liberation army had increased from 20,000 to 120,000 and could keep fighting for years.