At first the strike looked like being a total success. Then Massu showed his mettle, applying the full force of his division. Armoured cars arrived, attached hawsers to the closed steel shutters of the shops, and simply dragged them off their fixings. With some relish, Salan describes how the contents of the shops became exposed to the world: "oranges, bananas, honey cakes, jars of multi-coloured sweets.... Urchins playing in the street rushed forward, helped themselves, and took flight...." Algerian sources accused the paras of joining in the pillage; whatever the truth, the unhappy shop-owners were, in any event, forced to emerge in order to protect their unguarded goods, and were then ordered to remain open under threat of imprisonment.

XREF: Shows military tactical suppression of civilian economic resistance during the Algerian War.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 572