Army Ordered To Break Grip Of O.A.S.

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29803, 21 April 1962, Page 11

Army Ordered To Break Grip Of O.A.S.

IN .Z.P .A.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, April 19. President de Gaulle tonight personally ordered his new Commander -in - Chief in Algeria (General Michel Fourquet) to break the grip of the Secret Army Organisation (0.A.5.) on Oran and other Algerian cities.

General Fourquet flew to Paris direct from a meeting at Rocher Noir, near Algiers, with Mr Louis Joxe, the Minister for Algerian Affairs, and Mr Abderrahmane Fares, the Moslem head of the Algerian Provisional Executive.

Events are expected to move quickly in Algeria with the recent government changes in France and in the overall command in Algeria. Three plane-loads of riot police flew from Paris to Oran today, bringing the number sent from metropolitan France in the last three

days to more than 600. Strong Army reinforcements are also reported to have been promised for the Oran commander < General Joseph Katz).

Increasing anxiety at the Algerian situation is being expressed in Paris after reports that Moslem nerves are. near cracking point under the strain of provocative killings by the O_A.S. The tense situation has prevented many Moslems from going to work and thus from receiving any pay for nearly a month.

Nine Moslems were killed and eight wounded in a series of O.A.S. attacks in Algiers today.

In another incident, two violent explosions wrecked a taxation office in the centre of the city, setting the building on fire. The whole area was enveloped in a pell of smoke. Seven of the O.A.S. attacks were staged within half an hour, several of them in the centre of the city. In one attack. Europeans opened fire on Moslem stallholders in a pavement vegetable market—the only Moslem market in central Algiers—killing a vegetable seller, a flower merchant and

another Moslem and wounding one Moslem.. Police reported seizing a hidden stock of arms in Algiers port last night, including 72 automatic weapons and a quantity of grenades and ammunition. Quarter Sealed Off In Oran, security forces today sealed off and searched the European quarter of Plateau Saint-Michel, an O.A.S. stronghold. The O.A.S. have frequently fired mortars and hurled grenades from the area into the neighbouring Moslem quarter of La Ville Nouvelle. Workers at Oran petrol depots today began an indefinite strike in support of demands for protection on their way to and from work.

Trana-Tasman Cable (N-Z. Press Assn—Copyright) SYDNEY. April 20. The shore end of the transTasman cable was laid yesterday at Bondi beach. The Bondi shore end is made up of an earth link and a 10 mile stretch of cable which was laid off shore.