A few days after the French protectorate forced Sultan Mohammed Ben Youssef and the royal family into exile, the national resistance movement decided to move up a gear, declaring the beginning of the armed struggle against the colonizer. On the 7th of November, 1953 and after heading a sabotage operation against the train linking Casablanca to Algiers, two men targeted the same railway line. They have put bombs on the train killing and injuring several French soldiers. History.