Sétif massacre

The Sétif massacre was a series of widespread disturbances and killings in and around the French Algerian market town of Sétif, west of Constantine, in 1945. Local French police fired on local demonstrators at a protest on 8 May 1945.Riots in the town itself were followed by attacks on French colons (settlers) in the surrounding countryside resulting in 103 deaths. Subsequent attacks by the French authorities and European settler vigilantes caused much greater numbers of deaths amongst the Muslim population of the region: estimates ranged between 1,020 (contemporary French claim) and 45,000 (subsequent Radio Cairo claim) people killed. Both the outbreak and the indiscriminate nature of its repression are thought to have marked a turning point in Franco-Algerian relations, leading to the Algerian War of 1954-62.

The initial outbreak occurred on the morning of 8 May 1945, the same day that Nazi Germany surrendered in World War II. A parade by about 5,000 of the Muslim Algerian population of Sétif to celebrate the victory ended in clashes between the marchers and the local French gendarmerie, when the latter tried to seize banners attacking colonial rule. There is uncertainty over who fired first but both protesters and police were shot. Armed men amongst the Muslim marchers then killed Europeans caught in the streets. A smaller protest in the neighboring town of Guelma was dispersed the same evening. Attacks on pieds-noirs (French settlers) in the neighboring countryside resulted in the deaths of 103 Europeans, mostly civilians, plus another hundred wounded. The historian Alistair Horne reports that there were a number of rapes and that many of the corpses were mutilated.

After five days of chaos, the French military and police suppressed the rebellion, and then carried out a series of reprisals for the attacks on settlers. The army, which included Foreign Legion, Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian and Senegalese troops, carried out summary executions in the course of a ratissage ("raking-over") of Muslim rural communities suspected of involvement. Less accessible mechtas (Muslim villages) were bombed by French aircraft, and the cruiser Duguay-Trouin, standing off the coast in the Gulf of Bougie, shelled Kherrata. Pied-noir vigilantes lynched prisoners taken from local jails or randomly shot Muslims not wearing white arm bands (as instructed by the army) out of hand. It is certain that the great majority of the Muslim victims had not been implicated in the original outbreak.

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