Algeria celebrated the 70th anniversary of its war for independence from France on Friday with a large-scale military parade in Algiers, set against the backdrop of renewed diplomatic strains with its former colonial power.
Military jets streamed across the blue skies, and troops marched past Algiers’ Grand Mosque as thousands of spectators looked on, applauding.
The commemorative display marked the start of the Algerian Independence War on November 1, 1954, when the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched coordinated attacks on French government installations, sparking a brutal eight-year conflict.
Estimates of the war’s casualties vary widely, with France counting approximately 500,000 dead and Algeria claiming around 1.5 million, mostly Algerian lives lost. The war concluded with the Evian Accords in 1962, establishing Algeria’s independence.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, alongside senior officials and leaders from Tunisia, Mauritania, and Libya, attended the event, which marked Algeria’s historical and present-day commitment to sovereignty.
Absent from the ceremony was Morocco, whose ties with Algeria have soured in recent years, particularly after Morocco’s normalisation of relations with Israel in 2021.
The celebrations also underscored Algeria’s growing military strength, with defence spending anticipated to rise to $25 billion by 2025, reflecting the nation’s strategy to bolster its security forces with Russia as the primary arms supplier.