At this point, as so often happens with such incidents, the record is obscure as to who actually fired the first shot. According to the investigating Tubert Commission, based on French police reports, Commissaire Valère was knocked down by a stone while trying to seize one of the offending banners, and had to defend himself with his walking-stick. Some of the demonstrators then opened fire with concealed weapons. Another account has it that a police inspector in plain clothes came out of a café, was surrounded by shouting demonstrators, lost his nerve and shot in the stomach a young Muslim bearing a relatively unexceptionable banner, mortally wounding him. Whatever the truth, it seems fairly clear that there were armed men, bent on trouble, among the Muslim marchers, and these — egged on by the blood-curdling you-you ululations of their women — now began an indiscriminate massacre of any Europeans caught out in the streets.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 72