While it is admitted that any attempt to estimate casualties in this war is nearly impossible, the FLN (National Liberation Front) estimated in 1964 that nearly eight years of revolution had cost 1.5 million dead from war-related causes. Some other French and Algerian sources later put the figure at approximately 960,000 dead, while French officials estimated it at 350,000. French military authorities listed their losses at nearly 28,600 dead (6,000 from non-combat-related causes) and 65,000 wounded.
European-descended civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 (including 3,000 dead) in 42,000 recorded terrorist incidents. According to French official figures during the war, the Army, security forces and militias killed 141,000 presumed rebel combatants. But it is still unclear whether all the victims were actual fighters or merely civilians, mostly due to the Algerian press and second bureau (intelligence) which regarded every Moslem civilian as a rebel.
More than 12,000 Algerians died in internal FLN purges during the war. An additional 5,000 died in the "café wars" in France between the FLN and rival Algerian groups. French sources also estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed, or abducted and presumed killed, by the FLN.
Historians, like Alistair Horne and Raymond Aron, consider the actual figure of war dead to be far higher than the original FLN and official French estimates, but below the 1 million adopted by the Algerian government. Horne has estimated Algerian casualties during the span of eight years to be around 700,000. Uncounted thousands of Muslim civilians lost their lives in French army ratissages, bombing raids, and vigilante reprisals. The war uprooted more than 2 million Algerians, who were forced to relocate in French camps or to flee to Morocco, Tunisia, and into the Algerian hinterland, where many thousands died of starvation, disease, and exposure. In addition large numbers of pro-French Muslims were murdered when the FLN settled accounts after independence.
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