The F.L.N. could not entirely share her views, for it was still locked in its own struggle of intense internecine rivalry with resuscitated elements of Messali Hadj’s M.N.A., a struggle which exploded in an act of appalling savagery right in the middle of the Battle of Algiers, and temporarily distracted the world’s eyes from it. On 31 May the Gouvernement-Général announced that the army had stumbled upon a massacre of peasants at a mechta called Mélouza, down in the remote south of Kabylia. Three nights earlier, apparently, the F.L.N. had rounded up every male above the age of fifteen from the surrounding area, herded them into houses and into the mosque and slaughtered them with rifles, pick-axes and knives: a total of 301 in all, with another fourteen severely wounded survivors.

XREF: Connects to broader histories of the Algerian War and FLN-MNA internecine violence against civilians.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 694