Battle of Algiers

Algiers is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the... urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000. An estimate puts the population at about 3,574,000 as of 2010. Called El-Behdja or alternatively Alger la Blanche for the glistening white of its buildings as seen rising up from the sea, Algiers is situated on the west side of a bay of the Mediterranean Sea. The modern part of the city is built on the level ground by the seashore; the old part, the ancient city of the deys, climbs the steep hill behind the modern town and is crowned by the casbah or citadel, 122 metres above the sea. The casbah and the two quays form a triangle. The city name is derived from the Arabic name الجزائر al-Jazā’ir, which translates as "The Islands", referring to the four islands which lay off the city's coast until becoming part of the mainland in 1525.
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The Algerian Revolution was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its... independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare, maquis fighting, terrorism against civilians, the use of torture on both sides, and counter-terrorism operations by the French Army. The conflict was also a civil war between loyalist Algerians who believed in a French Algeria and their insurrectionist Algerian Muslim counterparts. Effectively started by members of the National Liberation Front on November 1, 1954, during the Toussaint Rouge , the conflict shook the foundations of the French Fourth Republic and led to its eventual collapse.
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