SOME 330 skeletons, including those of women and children, have been recovered from a mass grave – dating from Algeria’s bloody independence war 40 years ago – at the village of Cheria, some 430km east of the capital Algiers. The grave could contain as many as 600 bodies, said to have been shot by special units of the French SAS during the 1954-62 Algerian War of Independence. Some 1.5 million Algerians died during the war according to Algerian figures, while French historians put the death toll at between 140_000 and 250_000. Debate on events 40 years ago was rekindled by public admissions in November by two former French generals that the French army had routinely tortured suspects during the Algerian conflict. – AFP