Yacef Omar | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | January 1944 Algiers, French Algeria (present-day Algeria) |
| Died | 8 October 1957 (aged 13) Algiers, French Algeria |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  FLN |
| Years of service | 1956–1957 |
| Battles/wars | |
Yacef Omar, better known by his nom de guerre Petit Omar (meaning little Omar), was an Algerian child soldier and prominent figure of the Algerian War. [1] He is best known for his involvement in the Battle of Algiers during the Algerian War.
Yacef Omar was born in January 1944 at the Casbah citadel in Algiers to an ethnic Kabyle family (a Berber ethnic group predominant in Algeria). [2] He was the third child in a family of nine children, [3] and the nephew of Algerian revolutionary, Saadi Yacef. Omar grew up in a big familial house with Yacef, and came across prominent Algerian revolutionary figures like Abane Ramdane, Krim Belkacem, Colonel Ouamrane, Rabah Bitat, and Ali La Pointe who visited his uncle regularly. This inspired him to join the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), albeit his very young age. Little Omar became the liaison officer between the fighters and the leaders of the FLN during the Battle of Algiers. [3] He was handed this mission which had great importance. [4]
Courier between the FLN militants and leadership, he succeeded to cross all police roadblocks and elude the French paratroopers in the hardest moments of the Battle of Algiers. [4] He knew his neighborhood like the back of his hand. Houria Bourihed, whose family was instrumental in the Algerian war for independence remembers Omar not only as a heroic child but also as an expert player of marbles and other street games. [5]
On the night of October 8, 1957, with the help of labourer Laknan Abdullah, who revealed the hideout of FLN fighters to the French, French Army paratrooper commandos of the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment destroyed the house where Omar was hiding alongside other FLN militants following their refusal to surrender, killing him along with Hassiba Ben Bouali, Ali La Pointe, Hamid Bouhamidi and 16 others. [6] He was 13 years old at the time of his death. [7]
Omar is played by Mohamed Ben Kassen in the 1966 Italian-Algerian movie The Battle of Algiers .
The Algerian War was a major armed conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria winning its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare and war crimes. The conflict also became a civil war between the different communities and within the communities. The war took place mainly on the territory of Algeria, with repercussions in metropolitan France.
Djamila Bouhired is an Algerian militant, nationalist and revolutionary who opposed the French colonial rule of Algeria. She was raised in a middle-class family, having attended a French school in Algeria. She would go on in her youth to join the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) while a student activist. There she worked as a liaison officer and personal assistant of FLN commander Yacef Saadi in Algiers.
Ali Ammar, better known by his nom de guerre Ali la Pointe, was an Algerian militant and prominent revolutionary and guerilla figure of the Algerian War. He is best known for being one of the FLN commanders during the Battle of Algiers.
Larbi Ben M'hidi, commonly known as Si Larbi, was an Algerian revolutionary and prominent figure during the Algerian War of Independence. He is one of the six founding members of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) that launched an armed revolt throughout Algeria against French colonial rule and issued a proclamation calling for a sovereign Algerian state.
SaâdiYacef was an Algerian revolutionary, politician and actor. A prominent figure during the Algerian War, he served as a leader of the National Liberation Front. He was a Senator in Algeria's Council of the Nation until his death.
Marcel Bigeard, personal radio call-sign "Bruno", was a French military officer and politician who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French "unconventional" warfare thinking from that time onwards. He was one of the most decorated officers in France, and is particularly noteworthy because of his rise from being a regular soldier in 1936 to ultimately concluding his career in 1976 as a Lieutenant General and serving in the government of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
Zohra Drif Bitat is a retired Algerian lawyer, moudjahid, and the vice-president of the Council of the Nation, the upper house of the Algerian Parliament. Drif was born in Tissemselt, Algeria, part of the province of Tiaret, where her grandfather was an imam and her father served as a lawyer and judge in Tiaret. She is best known for her activities on behalf of the National Liberation Front (FLN) during the Algerian War of Independence.
The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 Italian-Algerian war film co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. It is based on action undertaken by rebels during the Algerian War (1954–1962) against the French government in North Africa, the most prominent being the eponymous Battle of Algiers, the capital of Algeria. It was shot on location in a Roberto Rossellini-inspired newsreel style: in black and white with documentary-type editing to add to its sense of historical authenticity, with mostly non-professional actors who had lived through the real battle. The film's score was composed by Pontecorvo and Ennio Morricone. It is often associated with Italian neorealist cinema.
The Battle of Algiers was a campaign fought during the Algerian War. It consisted of urban guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks carried out by the National Liberation Front (FLN) against the French authorities in Algiers, and by the French authorities, army, and French terrorist organizations against the FLN. Both sides targeted civilians throughout the battle. The conflict began with attacks by the FLN against the French forces and Pieds-Noirs followed by a terrorist attack on Algerian civilians in Algiers by a group of settlers, part of the terrorist group "La Main Rouge", aided by the police. Reprisals followed and the violence escalated, leading the French Governor-General to deploy the French Army in Algiers to suppress the FLN. Civilian authorities gave full powers to General Jacques Massu who, operating outside legal frameworks between January and September 1957, eliminated the FLN from Algiers. The use of torture, forced disappearances and illegal executions by the French later caused controversy in France.
Yves Godard was a French Army officer who fought in World War II, First Indochina War and Algerian War. A graduate of Saint-Cyr and Chasseur Alpin, he served as a ski instructor in Poland during 1939, but after World War II began he returned to France. He became a prisoner-of-war in 1940 and tried several times to escape, finally succeeding on his third attempt. He made his way to France and joined the French Resistance maquis in Savoy. From December 1944 to February 1946, he headed the 27ème bataillon de chasseurs alpins.
The Battle of Philippeville, also known as the Philippeville massacre or the August Offensive, was a series of raids launched on 20 August 1955 on various cities and towns of the Constantine region by FLN insurgents and armed mobs during the Algerian War between France and the Algerian rebels. The raids, which mostly took the form of ethnic riots, resulted in the massacre of several dozens of European settlers, known as pieds-Noirs. The massacres were then followed by reprisals by the French army and pied-noir vigilantes, which resulted in the death of several thousand Muslim Algerians. The events of late August 1955 in the Constantinois region are considered to be a major turning point of the Algerian War.
The First Battle of El Djorf took place on 22 September 1955, during the Algerian War, between the National Liberation Army and the French Army.
Louisette Ighilahriz is an Algerian writer, former Conseil de la Nation member, and a former member of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) who came to widespread attention in 2000 with her story of captivity by the French from 1957 to 1962, becoming, in the words of the American journalist Adam Shatz, "a catalyst of a debate about the legacy of the French-Algerian war".
The Battle of Bouzegza took place during the Algerian War in the Berber-speaking region of the Adrar Azegzaw massif, at the far eastern end of the Mitidja Plain.
The Palestro ambush, or Djerrah ambush, took place on 18 May 1956, during the Algerian War, near the village of Djerrah in the region of Palestro in Kabylie. A section of about forty men from the National Liberation Army (ALN) under the command of Lieutenant Ali Khodja ambushed a unit of 21 men from the 9th Colonial Infantry Regiment of the French Army commanded by Second Lieutenant Hervé Artur.
Nahla El Fatiha Naili is an Algerian sculptor.
Brahim Hadjadj, was an Algerian actor. He is most notable for the roles in the films The Battle of Algiers, Patrouille à l'Est and L'opium et le baton.
Mohamed Aïchaoui was an Algerian journalist and militant in the nationalist movement against French Algeria. Aïchaoui wrote the Declaration of 1 November 1954, the National Liberation Front's first appeal to the Algerian people at the start of the Algerian War. After earlier imprisonment and torture, he died in a 1959 clash with the French army.
Hocine Mezali is an Algerian journalist and writer. He had been the head of intelligence during the Battle of Algiers (1956–1957).
Abderrahmane Taleb, also known by his wartime pseudonym Mohand Akli, born on 5 March 1930 in the Casbah of Algiers, was the artificer of the Autonomous Zone of Algiers during the Battle of Algiers. He was guillotined on 24 April 1958 at the Barberousse Prison in Algiers.