French President François Hollande has acknowledged that Algerian demonstrators were massacred during a pro-independence rally in Paris in 1961.
The admission marks the first time a French leader has publicly accepted that the killings took place.
"On 17 October 1961, Algerians who were protesting for independence were killed in a bloody repression. The Republic recognises these facts with lucidity," Hollande said in a statement on Wednesday.
"I pay homage to victims 51 years later."
Historians claim more than 200 people were killed, when police, under orders of former Nazi collaborator and Paris prefect of police, Maurice Papon, attacked thousands of Algerian protestors, during Algeria’s brutal war of indepencence from France.
The main opposition criticised the statement, saying that the police force as a whole cannot be blamed.
"While denying the events of 17 October 1961 and forgetting the victims is out of the question, it is unacceptable to blame the state police and with them the whole Republic," head of the UMP, Christian Jacob said in a statement.
Witness reports say how protestors were chased around Paris and bludgeoned to death in police stations, while many bodies were thrown into the Seine.
French authorities banned a book about the killings soon after the massacre and blocked the publication of photographs of the massacre.
