February 13 is the 64th anniversary of France's first nuclear test in Algeria in 1960. Algeria commemorates this date and has officially requested France, in 2021, to take charge of site rehabilitation operations.
France carried out seventeen nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966. “Algiers is trying to put pressure on France” on the decontamination of the sites, says Jean-Marie Collin, director of Ican France, the French branch of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons.