Foreign News: To the Barricades

The hotheads, toughs and ultras held the heart of the city of Algiers. Their barricades of paving blocks sealed off street after street around the university. Students cradling Tommy guns sat on the roofs, dangling their legs. Members of the Front National Français poured in from the nearby slums to stand guard under their black Celtic crosses or to drill in the makeshift uniforms of the territorial army, a sort of Algerian home guard. Truckloads of armed peasants had rushed in from the rich plain of Mitidja. And there were the girls of all of them, serving as nurses or waitresses...

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