AFP RYAD KRAMDI
The head of the combat engineering department at the Algerian ground forces command, Brigadier General Bouzid Boufrioua, sent a strongly worded message to France, asking it to assume its responsibilities for the nuclear tests it carried out in Algeria.
Boufrioua said, in an interview with the monthly “Army” magazine: “More than 60 years have passed since the first nuclear test in Algeria. France still refuses to hand over maps that reveal the sites of nuclear waste.”
The senior military official stated that France had carried out 17 explosions (4 surface area Reggane and 13 underground in In Acre), all of which were carried out under the “pretext” of scientific research, not to mention other complementary experiments.
He explained that the surface experiments in Reggane had polluted large parts of southern Algeria and reached other African countries. As for the underground experiments in In Acre, many of them “got out of control, which led to the spread of the fissile products of the explosion polluting large areas.”
The official also highlighted, in the same context, that among the remnants of these experiments there are “huge, abundant waste of radiation, long-lived, some of which are buried underground and some that remain in the open.”
In this regard, he also referred to the radiation spread over vast areas that caused “many victims of the population and damage to the environment that continues to this day.”
He stressed that “handing over the maps is a right that the Algerian state warmly demands, and does not forget the issue of compensation for the Algerian victims of the tests.”
He added that “France should shoulder its historic responsibilities,” especially in light of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in July 2017 with the approval of 122 countries.
France carried out 17 nuclear explosions in the Algerian part of the Sahara between 1960 and 1966.
Eleven tests came after the Evian Accords concluded in 1962, which ended the eight-year war of independence.
Source: Agencies
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