Civilian authorities gave full powers to General Jacques Massu who, operating outside legal frameworks between January and September 1957, eliminated the FLN from Algiers.

[8] On the night of 10 August 1956, helped by members of Robert Martel's Union française nord-africaine, Achiary planted a bomb at Thèbes Road in the Casbah targeted at the FLN responsible for the June shootings.

Ben M'Hidi decided to extend terrorist actions to the European city as to touch more urban populations, Arab bourgeoisie in particular, and use Algiers to advertise his cause in metropolitan France and in the International community.

On the evening of 30 September 1956, a trio of female FLN militants recruited by Yacef Saâdi, Djamila Bouhired, Zohra Drif and Samia Lakhdari, carried out the first series of bomb attacks on three civilian targets in European Algiers.

[10] On 22 October 1956, a Moroccan DC-3 plane ferrying the foreign affairs personnel of the FLN from Rabat to Tunis for a conference with President Bourguiba and the Sultan of Morocco was re-routed to Algiers.

On the FLN side, a decision was made in late 1956 to embark upon a sustained campaign of urban terrorism designed to show the authority of the French state did not extend to Algiers, Algeria's largest city.

The following day, a bomb exploded in the cemetery where Froger was to be buried; enraged European civilians responded by carrying out random revenge attacks (ratonnade), killing four Muslims and injuring 50.

An elite unit, it was officered by many veterans of the Indochina War, including Colonels Marcel Bigeard, Roger Trinquier, Fossey-François and Yves Godard (chief of staff), all of whom were experienced in counter-insurgency and revolutionary warfare and determined to avoid another defeat.

[15] On the afternoon of Saturday 26 January, female FLN operatives again planted bombs in European Algiers, the targets were the Otomatic on Rue Michelet, the Cafeteria and the Coq-Hardi brasserie.

The strike appeared to be a success with most native Algerian shops remaining shuttered, workers failed to turn up and children didn't attend school.

However Massu soon deployed his troops and used armored cars to pull the steel shutters off shops while army trucks rounded up workers and schoolchildren and forced them to attend their jobs and studies.

[20] Trinquier operated an intelligence gathering network throughout the city called the Dispositif de Protection Urbaine (DPU) which divided Algiers into sectors, sub-sectors, blocks and buildings each individually numbered.

[22] During the battle the use of torture by the French security forces became institutionalised, the techniques ranging from beatings, electroshock (the gegene), waterboarding, sexual assault and rape.

[24] Alleg was subjected to the gegene and waterboarding; following his release, he wrote his book La Question, which detailed his final meeting with Audin and his own experience of torture.

[25] Massu appointed Major Paul Aussaresses to run a special interrogation unit[26] based at the Villa des Tourelles in the Mustapha District of Algiers.

[28] Following interrogation the vast majority of suspects were sent to camps, while those deemed too dangerous were driven to a remote location outside of Algiers where they were killed and buried.

[29] On 9 February, paratroopers of the 2nd Parachute Chasseur Regiment (2e RCP) arrested a prominent young lawyer and FLN sympathiser Ali Boumendjel.

[34] According to Paul Teitgen, secretary general of the French police in Algiers in 1957, Bigeard put the victim's feet in a basin, poured quick-setting cement in and threw the person into the sea from a helicopter.

Many terrorists would have been freed and given the opportunity of launching other attacks..The judicial system was not suited for such drastic conditions... Summary executions were therefore an inseparable part of the tasks associated with keeping law and order.

[38] On 3 June Yacef's forces planted bombs in street lamps at bus stops in the centre of Algiers, the explosions killed eight and wounded 90, a mix of French and Algerians.

[39] In July informal negotiations took place between Yacef and Germaine Tillion to try to agree a deal whereby attacks on civilians would stop in return for the French ceasing to guillotine members of the FLN.

[40] On 26 August following intelligence gained by Godard's operatives, the 3e RPC raided a house in the Impasse Saint-Vincent where Yacef's new bomb-maker and deputy were believed to be hiding.

Paul Teitgen, general secretary of the Prefecture of Algiers who resigned in March 1957 (but was kept in his post by Governor-General Lacoste until October 1957) over the use of torture by French forces calculated that over 24,000 Algerians had been arrested during the battle and by subtracting those released or still in captivity estimated that as many as 3,000 were missing.