Definition:
In May 1945 demonstrators in the Algerian market town of Sétif turned violent, extending their actions to the French settlers in the surrounding countryside. When 103 settlers were killed, the French authorities sent in the military (including the Foreign Legion and Senegalese troops) and police. The number of Muslims killed in retaliation is disputed. The official French tally (Tubert report) is 1,020. But historians believe that somewhere between 6,000 and 40,000 people died in the massacre.
The massacre is one of the causes of the uprising nine years later which started the Algerian War of Independence.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria since April 1999 has referred to the Sétif massacre as an attempted “genocide”.
