Spurred on by the atrocities of the O.A.S., individual F.L.N. killings reached a new level of horror; a Jewish Algerian, sympathising with the F.L.N., told the author how "they killed a shop inspector in his car, a man who had never done anything to anyone. They sliced open his skull, took out his brains and carefully placed them on the ground — like a milestone on the roadside." The twenty-year-old son of her friend was kidnapped and found the next day in their rubbish bin: "bled white, because the F.L.N. needed the blood for their own wounded". Gruesomely improbable as this story sounded, it received some supporting evidence in the last month of the war when forty-one European bodies were discovered in an Oran abattoir, drained of blood.

QUESTION: The 'bled white' account is flagged as 'gruesomely improbable,' and the abattoir evidence is presented as partial support. Worth verifying how much independent corroboration exists for these atrocity claims versus wartime propaganda.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1512