Estimates of the number of Algerians affected by testing range from 27,000 — cited by the French Ministry of Defense — to 60,000, the figure given by Abdul Kadhim al-Aboudi, an Algerian professor of nuclear physics.
Radioactive material is seeping out from this Sahara desert mountain where French scientists conducted nuclear tests in the 1960s, contaminating the soil and poisoning relations between France and Algeria.
Residents of Reggane told Benchiha (a French-Algerian journalist who was born in Algeria a year before Gerboise Bleue and has made two documentaries on Reggane and the surrounding areas) about the strange uptick of medical issues that first appeared during the 1970s and continue to this day. Babies born with atrophied limbs; cancers of the liver, stomach and skin; cases of temporary blindness among those who saw the brutal flash of light as it ripped through the Maghreb about 6:30 a.m.
Starting in 1961, France conducted 17 nuclear test explosions at In Ekker, where it carried out underground blasts inside the mountain, and in the Reggane region of the Sahara desert, where it conducted surface explosions.
El Hamel Omar, president of a local association that tries to alert people to the dangers of contamination said: "Cancer killed a lot of people in the region, but very often the victims as well as their parents did not know they were ill.
Hussein Dakhal, who lives in a village near In Ekker mountain, is now 83. He remembers when, on May 1, 1962, the French conducted a test codenamed "Beryl". It went wrong, letting radioactive material escape from inside the mountain.
"I heard the explosion. Since then, life has changed for us ... unknown diseases and health problems started to emerge," he told Reuters
According to Algerian data, radiation in some areas near the test sites is 20 times higher than the norm. "Do not stay more than 10 minutes. It could be dangerous," one scientist at Ekker told the visitors.
There were 210 French nuclear tests from 1960 through 1995. Seventeen of them were done in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966, starting in the middle of the Algerian War. One-hundred ninety-three were carried out in French Polynesia.
According to France 24
It is noteworthy that none of the nuclear tests by France was Carrie out in France, but in "French Alfredo" and "French Polynesia" which were all French colonies.
Courtesy: https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idAFJOE6230HA20100304
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/3/1/algerians-suffering-from-french-atomic-legacy-55-years-after-nuclear-tests.html
http://www.france24.com/en/20090324-four-decades-french-nuclear-tests-atomic-bomb-gerboise-bleue-algeria-polynesia
