Hacq now decided that the remaining barbouzes had to be got out of the country, but once again Degueldre struck first. The last barbouze detachment of twenty-five men was trapped in a seedy hotel and submitted to a siege continuing forty-eight hours without the Algiers police making any effort to intervene. Four survivors tried to break out by car to get a wounded comrade to hospital, but were shot up on the way. Out of control, their car ran into a wall, and a terrible scene now took place. Pied noir occupants of the neighbouring apartment blocks rushed up, prevented the injured men from getting out of the car, then set fire to it and danced jubilant round the flaming pyre.

FICTION: The image of a crowd dancing around a flaming car is a powerful, visceral scene usable in fiction or nonfiction narratives about mob violence and breakdown of state control.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1504