Besbes

Besbes (Arabic: بسباس ) is a city in Algeria.

It was founded by the French in the early 20th century (1930-1940) as a colonial village. It was given the name of Randon after the French colonial general, but the local population used to call the area "Oued Besbes" or "Besbes" which was given to the city as an official name after Algeria's independence in 1962. Besbes is located in the west of El Tarf Province, 24km to the south of Annaba. The city is surrounded by agricultural land (Annaba plain). During the French occupation, the new village was inhabited by colonial rich families who used to own most of the surrounding farms.

During the war of liberation, many of the local population were mistreated, tortured and others were killed on the battlefield.

In addition to the original families who used to live in the area even before the construction of Randon (Nacer, Zemahri, Dhorbani, Dokani, Djemil..etc), waves of immigrants started to flow to the city after independence. Nowadays, Besbes is a city of more than 30,000 inhabitants.

Google satellite map of Besbes: [1]

From Besbes is the film maker Karim Traidia: [2]