December 9-10, 1952
NATIONALISTS AGAINST COLONIALISM: Casablanca, 8 – Morocco’s «Bloody Monday,» with dozens of deaths, was a turning point in the struggle by the nationalists of North Africa against French rule. Yesterday and today, there were demonstrations in Casablanca and other urban centers of Morocco, and strikes by nationalists in protest at the murder of Tunisian leader Ferhad Hached, which turned into an armed revolution. The nationalists set off today in two columns of about 6,000 people to march to the French section. The police were unable to maintain law and order and the army was called in to contain the enraged Moroccans, who used clubs, knives and stones to attack the Europeans they encountered on the road. The former mayor of Agadir was dragged out of his car and stoned to death. Two other Frenchmen were beheaded and a fourth stoned to death in a quarry outside the city. (…) The French police announced that they sustained more than 50 fatalities, while the Moroccan insurgents claimed that they lost more than 41 in the fighting. COMMUNISTS AGAINST COMMUNISTS: London, 8 – According to news reports from Prague (following the execution of 11 leading cadres of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party), a new wave of purges of leading Communists took place today.
