Malika Gaïd

Malika Gaïd was an Algerian nurse who cared for fighters in the war of independence against France. She was born on 24 August 1933 in the Belcourt district of Algiers, the youngest of seven children of a schoolteacher, and trained in nursing at Sétif, earning her diploma in 1951. She worked in the hospitals of Kherrata, Guenzet and Bougaâ, where she secretly treated members of the independence fighters. In 1955 Colonel Amirouche invited her to join the soldiers of the National Liberation Army in the Soummam Valley, and in August 1956 she took part in the Soummam Conference as a nurse and the only woman present. She served as both nurse and armed fighter until she was shot dead by a French soldier on 27 June 1957, while caring for the wounded in a cave in the mountains west of Bouïra. She is remembered as a martyr of Algerian independence and was commemorated on a postage stamp in 2019.