(, "Red All Saints' Day"), also known as ("Bloody All-Saints' Day") is the name given to a series of 70 attacks committed by militant members of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) that took place on 1 November 1954—the Catholic festival of All Saints' Day—in French Algeria. It is usually taken as the starting date for the Algerian War which lasted until 1962 and led to Algerian independence from France. Background Attacks Between midnight and 2 am on the morning of All Saints' Day, 70 individual attacks were made by FLN militants against police, military and civilian Pieds noirs targets around French Algeria. Ten people were killed in the coordinated attacks. Reaction in Paris After hearing of the attacks, Francois Mitterrand, then Minister of the Interior, despatched two companies (600 men) of the (CRS) to Algeria. A total of three companies of paratroopers also arrived between 1 and 2 November. On 12 November 1954, Pierre Mendes France, President of the French Council of Ministers declared that the attacks would not be tolerated in a speech to the National Assembly: The Mendes France government increased the number of soldiers in Algeria from 56,000 to 83,000 men to deal with the situation in the Aures mountains — the "main bastion of the insurrection," though the sending of the conscripts to Algeria did not occur until one year later after the (lit: "Day of Tomatoes") on 6 February 1956 under the Mollet government. Public reaction The political reaction notwithstanding, the attacks did not receive much coverage in the French media. The French daily newspaper ran a single short column on the front page, and gave it just two columns. References 1954 in Algeria Algerian War Terrorist incidents in Algeria Massacres in Algeria Mass murder in 1954 Algerian war crimes November 1954 events in Africa 1954 murders in Algeria Terrorist incidents in Africa in 1954 Terrorist incidents in Algeria in the 1950s