The casualties inflicted by the armed forces were set officially (by the Tubert Commission Report) at 500 to 600, but the numbers of Muslim villagers killed by the more indiscriminate naval and aerial bombardments may well have amounted to more. Nevertheless, the figure seems to have been but a small proportion of the dead accounted for by the vengeful backlash of an outraged and frightened European population. Spontaneously organised vigilantes seized prisoners out of country gaols and lynched them; Muslims found not wearing the white brassards as prescribed by the army were simply despatched on the spot. At one village alone, held under siege by the Muslims during the uprisings, 219 were reported to have been shot out of hand. At Guelma, where the European fury reputedly reached its highest point, the Algerian Communist Party was well to the fore in the work of reprisal — a factor of significance in the forthcoming revolution.

XREF: Connects to histories of colonial repression and settler violence in North Africa, and to patterns of vigilante backlash seen in other colonial contexts.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 74