With the F.L.N.'s new programme of hit-and-run terrorist pinpricks, the security situation round Algiers, and inside the city itself, seemed to be deteriorating again. Pied noir opinion had been particularly outraged by an incident on 31 July, when a uniformed detachment of the F.L.N. had attacked unarmed bathers — men and women — on a beach at Chénoua, west of Algiers, killing a dozen. The incident had provided fresh grist to the mill of the F.A.F. extremists. This selective terrorism, plus the new assertiveness of the G.P.R.A. in the world at large since Melun, also made it harder than ever to find those “third force” Muslims, not just to stand as candidates in national or local elections, but simply to fill the various administrative posts which it had so long been a French priority to create in order to appease Muslim demands. Over the previous two years, no more than a hundred Muslims had actually been inducted into senior administrative posts.

XREF: Connects to the broader knowledge of the FLN's strategy of delegitimizing any Muslim cooperation with French colonial authorities during the Algerian War.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1283