Monday 24 February 2025 
By: Hana Saada
ALGIERS- “Crimes against humanity”, “vile and heinous crimes”, “violation of human rights”, and “premeditated state crime”. These are, among others, the adjectives describing the nuclear tests perpetrated by France in the Algerian Sahara, including those carried on Feb. 13, 1960 in Hamoudia area at Reggane (150 km South of Adrar).
Nuclear bomb tests carried out by the French colonial regime in the 1960s caused irreversible contamination of the Algerian Sahara’s landscapes and lives.
In the opinion of researchers and national and international experts, these tests exceed in intensity that of Hiroshima (Japan) as their effects were disastrous for humans, fauna and flora.
In this vein, the president of the National Association of Victims of these explosions, Pr. Amar Mansouri, told APS on the eve of the commemoration of the 63rd anniversary of these nuclear explosions, that “France carried out 57 explosions, additional tests and nuclear experiments in Algeria”, adding that “the assessment of the total power of the French nuclear explosions in Algeria between 1960 and 1966 is 600 kilotons, that is to say more than 46 times the Hiroshima bomb and more than 28 times that of Nagasaki”, specified the expert, pointing out that “significant quantities of plutonium, whose half-life is 24,400 years, have been dispersed over thousands of hectares”.
He indicated that “to carry out this military nuclear program in the Algerian Sahara, France has mobilized 24,000 French civilians and soldiers, including 2,000 permanently”. However, according to Mansouri, “the number of Algerians involved in this program is still unknown. The archives still remain under the seal of defense secrecy in France. Nevertheless, thousands of Algerians have certainly been infected.
Regarding the number of victims of these explosions, which would be up to 42,000, according to data from the National Organization of Mujahideen (ONM), the researcher considered that this figure “is below reality, because since 1962, the number of people who died as a result of these tests continued to increase”.
Since their experimentation, more than half a century ago, the scale of devastation caused by these violent explosions has been criticized and proved by direct evidence from victims or their relatives, through studies and specialized research or by media reports.
“Horror”, for its part, is also narrated by people, witnesses of strong tremors that have shaken the region of Reggane and the surrounding areas, but especially of human and environmental tragedy that ensued.
On the health plan, the disaster continues to cause, over the years, the emergence of new diseases, up till now unknown in the region and particularly related to cancer, leukemia and blindness, due to exposure to radioactivity. In fact, the number of cases of cancer of all types, congenital malformations and infertility due to the radioactivity caused by the explosions carried out by colonial France in the Reggane region on February 13th, 1960 is upsurging as stated by “El Gheith El Kadem” Patient Assistance Association in Adrar.
The Association President Toumi Abderrahmane sounded the alarm on the lingering effects of radiation induced by nuclear explosions in Reggane. The disastrous consequences of these explosions carried out on the surface, for the most part, are observed, even today, on the various ecological components and the environment of the region.
The colonial France is supposed to answer for these crimes before the International Law and to the Algerian people, while compensating people affected by the wave of damage that ensued.
“There are several mechanisms for settling this dispute, either in a bilateral framework or through international justice”, noted the same official who suggested the organization, under the aegis of the UN, of an international conference on that question,” Pr. Amar Mansouri suggested.