FIVE DIE IN ORAN

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29714, 6 January 1962, Page 13

FIVE DIE IN ORAN

Troops Battle Moslems

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

ORAN, January 4

Passers-by fled in panic as French security troops and Moslem insurgents battled in central Oran today. Two Europeans and three Moslems died in the day’s clashes. Twenty-three persons were injured, 10 of them Europeans. A nine-man commando, armed with sub-machine guns, infiltrated into the city and suddenly launched an attack on a cafe, wounding a soldier and a policeman with their first bursts of fire.

French troops on guard at a nearby crossroads engaged the commando and as passers-by scattered to escape the hail of bullets, the insurgents, firing as they retreated, barricaded themselves in a house.

The troops brought up an armoured car and after one insurgent had been killed by its fire the eight others surrendered. One French soldier was killed in the action and a second policeman and a civilian wounded.

Riot police and troops sealed off the area, and after a house-to-house search detained 12 persons, including a woman, suspected of helping the insurgents. The commando attack came as a climax of two days of bitter violence between Moslems and Europeans in Oran.