Editing Houari Boumédiène (section)

==Early life and War of Independence==
[[File:The house where the late Algerian President Houari Boumediene was born (Guelma peovince).jpg|thumb|left|The house where Boumediene was born in douar beni aadi]]
[[File:Houari Boumediène - War of Independence.jpg|thumb|left|Boumediène during the [[Algerian War of Independence]]]]

Not much is known about Boumédiène's early life. His place of birth variously appear as Guelma, the village of Clauzel near Guelma, or Héliopolis, and his date of birth as 16 August 1925, 23 August 1927, or in most sources as 1932. He was educated at a Quranic school in Guelma until he was 14, then an Arabic secondary school in Constantine.

In 1952, when France was conscripting Algerians to fight in the Indochina War, Boumédiène went to Cairo, where he studied at the Al-Azhar University. It was there he first met [[Ahmed Ben Bella]]. He joined the [[National Liberation Front (Algeria)|National Liberation Front]] (FLN) in the [[Algerian War|Algerian War of Independence]] in 1955, adopting ''Houari Boumédiène'' as his nom-de-guerre (from [[Abu Madyan|Sidi Boumediène]], the name of the patron saint of the city of Tlemcen in western Algeria, where he served as an officer during the war, and [[Sidi El Houari]], the patron saint of nearby Oran). He reached the rank of colonel, then the highest rank in the FLN forces, and from 1960 he was chief of staff of the ALN, the FLN's military wing.

He was married to Anissa al-Mansali.