Hassiba Ben Bouali
Hassiba Ben Bouali was an Algerian independence fighter who died at 19 during the Battle of Algiers. The University of Chlef bears her name. She was born on 18 January 1938 in the Chlef region, then called El Asnam, and died on 8 October 1957 in the Casbah.
Hassiba Ben Bouali was an Algerian independence fighter who died at 19 during the Battle of Algiers. The University of Chlef bears her name. She was born on 18 January 1938 in the Chlef region, then called El Asnam, and died on 8 October 1957 in the Casbah.
The Ben Bouali family was well-off. In the late 1940s it moved to Algiers, where she went to school and joined the scouts.
Scouting trips showed her the poverty of many Algerians, and she joined the independence movement at about 17. From 1956 she belonged to an FLN network in Algiers.
Late in 1956 she left her family home and went into hiding in the Casbah. On 15 September 1957 she wrote a last letter to her parents.
Ali La Pointe, Petit Omar and Mahmoud Bouhamidi died with her.
Since 2006 her last hiding place, at 5 rue des Abderames, has been the Ali La Pointe museum. Her character appears in Gillo Pontecorvo's film The Battle of Algiers (1966). On 8 March 2025 a ceremony in her memory was held at the Sidi M'hamed cemetery, in Algiers.
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