During the Algerian War, French Foreign Legion troops abused and massacred many civilian Algerians, women, and children. A group of French Foreign Legion troops took a group photo in front of the massacred and scattered Algerian corpses.

　　During the Algerian War, French Foreign Legion troops abused and massacred many civilian Algerians, women, and children. A group of French Foreign Legion troops took a group photo in front of the corpses of Algerians they massacred. The emaciated and bony corpses of Algerian victims littered the massacre site.

　　On November 1, 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLM), fighting for Algeria's independence, launched an armed resistance against French colonial rule, In the early morning of November 1, the guerrillas attacked several military installations, police stations, warehouses, communications facilities, and public facilities. From 1956 to 1957, the National Liberation Front adopted hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, focusing on ambushes and night raids to avoid fighting the better-armed French army. They adopted hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, focusing on ambushes and night raids.

　By 1956, France had deployed some 400,000+ French troops in Algeria. Combat missions attacking the National Liberation Front were carried out primarily by the colony's elite infantry paratroopers and French Foreign Legion. About 170,000 Algerian Muslims served in the French regular army, mostly as volunteers, and in the late 1950s France forcibly relocated more than 2 million Algerians from their mountainous homelands to concentration camps in the plains to prevent them from supporting the rebels.

　 The Algerian War resulted in the deaths of some 300,000 to 1.5 million Algerians, some 25,600 French troops, and some 6,000 Europeans. French troops destroyed more than 8,000 villages and forcibly relocated more than 2 million Algerians to concentration camps; upon Algeria's independence in 1962, some 900,000 European Algerians fled to France in the months that followed, fearing revenge from the National Liberation Front. The French government was not prepared to accept the huge number of refugees, and the country was in turmoil. Algerian soldiers, especially Halkis, who had fought in the French army, were considered traitors, and many were abducted and tortured by lynch mobs and then killed by the National Liberation Front. About 90,000 people fled the country to France.

 On November 1, 1954, fighting broke out between French Christian settlers and the National Liberation Front led by Ben Bella. Although initially outnumbered, the atrocities committed by the well-armed French and colonial forces soon brought the National Liberation Front the support of the peasant masses. The National Liberation Front extended its guerrilla offensive to Algiers at the end of 1956. As a result, the French Fourth Republican government lost control over the settlers. De Gaulle returned, causing the collapse of the Fourth Republic and the creation of the Fifth French Republic. De Gaulle immediately re-established French military allegiance in Algeria through his personal authority against the secret military organization of Salins. De Gaulle called on the National Liberation Front to negotiate peace, and the fighting stopped with the signing of the Evian Agreement on March 18, 1962, on the shores of Lake Geneva. Algerian independence was declared on July 3, 1962.