The Spreading Terror

The more than 350,000 Algerians who live and work in France may want to stay out of their homeland's troubles, but they are not allowed to. Scores of them have paid with their lives for refusing or failing to contribute to the F.L.N. (National Liberation Front). An estimated 95% of them now pay up. Last week, in a series of well-planned and devastating acts of sabotage, the F.L.N. terrorists turned, not upon their fellow Algerians, but upon the French themselves. Even as Premier de Gaulle pleaded his cause in Algeria (see above), the two-year-old F.L.N. threat to "carry the war to France" became--at least for a while--a grim reality.

At 2 o'clock one morning, a Renault Fregate drew up before the main motor pool of the Paris police, and four Algerians jumped out. They killed the sentry outside, burst into the guardroom, shot three more policemen, then tossed homemade bombs into the depot's gas tanks. A few minutes later, the central police switchboard came alive with emergency calls from all over Paris. At Vincennes, a group of Algerians, attacking a munitions factory, killed one policeman and wounded another.

Outside Paris, terrorists sabotaged the railway at Salbris, fired gasoline depots near Le Havre and in six different places in the south of France. In Toulouse, 300,000 gallons of gasoline burned up. Near Marseille, firemen fought a gas fire that was to last all week.

All police leaves were canceled, and for the first time since the Communist riots of 1947, the army was called out to guard "places of strategic importance." In metropolitan Paris the police in one day rounded up 3,000 Algerians and commandeered the Velodrome d'Hiver, the Madison Square Garden of Paris, as a detention camp.

While President Rene Coty angrily denounced the "abominable" acts of sabotage, F.L.N. leaders in Cairo and Rabat proudly declared themselves the authors of the terror. Rebel Leader Ferhat Abbas, once regarded as a moderate among the rebels, promised more sabotage. Fearing De Gaulle's skillful wooing of the Moslem population, the F.L.N. apparently hopes to stir up enough hatred and dissension to make a mockery out of all talk of "fraternization."

Last week Algerian rebels even threatened to sabotage French ships and planes everywhere, pointedly warned foreigners to cancel their reservations. "How far is the F.L.N. willing to go?" a TIME correspondent in Rabat asked F.L.N. Leader Abdelhamid Mahri.

"As far as necessary."

"To Nasserism?"

"The United States might consider itself fortunate if we went only as far as Nasserism."

"How much farther can you go?"

"Use your imagination. If I have the choice between extermination and Communism, I will choose Communism."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.