Fate of hostages unclear after reports that at least 30 were killed in military operation that ended a 36-hour standoff.
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| At least 30 hostages and 11 members of an al-Qaeda-affiliated group were killed when Algerian forces stormed a desert gas plant to free the captives, drawing international attention to al-Qaeda in North Africa. Eight Algerians and seven foreigners, including two British, two Japanese and a French national, were among the dead, an Algerian security source said. The military says some of the gunmen who took hundreds of hostages at the gas facility, are still holed up inside. Nine foreign nationals were released but the fate of a number of those who had been held by the fighters remains unclear. At least 22 hostages are still missing - eight from Norway and 14 from Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cut short a visit to Indonesia on Friday, reports said, to fly home and deal with the hostage crisis in Algeria in which numerous Japanese are caught up. The Japanese government criticised the Algerian army for the bloody end to the hostage crisis. Japan's foreign ministry also summoned the Algerian ambassador demanding answers over the rescue operation Yoshihide Suga, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, said: "There is still much confusion in the information but we are receiving reports of casualties. "We deeply regret the actions taken by the Algerian military." Communication Minister Mohamed Said said troops had been forced to act after talks with the kidnappers failed. He said many fighters had been killed in the operation at the In Amenas gas field. Details lacking Algerian officials says those behind the attack were part of an Al-Qaeda linked group and included Egyptian, Algerian and Tunisian nationals. The government said it was forced to launch the military operation because the fighters had threatened to blow up the gas plant. The Philippines government says one Filipino managed to escape with a Japanese citizen before the military operation started. "We have also received a report from our embassy in London that around 34 Filipinos working with different companies in the gas field are being evacuated by chartered plane to London via Parma, Italy," Paul Hernandez, spokesperson of the Philippines department of foreign affairs, said. Oil giant BP has chartered two flights from Algeria to London, while a US plane landed at an airport near the desert gas plant. The plane will evacuate Americans caught up in the crisis, a local source said. France Interior Minister Manuel Valls said that two French workers were back safe from Algeria, adding that "very few" were working at the gas plant at the time of the attack. "There were very few French on this especially sprawling base," the minister told French radio. "We have news from two of those who are back. Regarding the two others, if there were two others, we don't have more information at this stage and hope to have more later in the morning," he added. A British diplomatic source said that they had not received word from Algeria that the hostage crisis ended. "The terrorist incident in Algeria remains ongoing," said a Foreign Office spokeswoman, adding that British Prime Minister David Cameron would chair a meeting of Britain's COBRA emergency committee on Friday. 'Libyan fighters' The Masked Brigade said its fighters seized the workers on Wednesday in retaliation for Algeria letting France use its airspace to launch operations against rebels in northern Mali , but security experts said the raid appeared to have been planned well in advance.
"According to the information we have, the terrorist group which attacked the In Amenas site came from Libya," Dahou Ould Kablia told Algeria's Arab-language dailyEchorouk. Kablia had said on Wednesday the kidnappers were from the region, denying that they came from Libya or from Mali as some of them claimed. Algeria's official APS news agency said nearly 600 Algerian workers and four foreign hostages - two Britons, a Frenchman and a Kenyan - had been freed during the operation. The Irish foreign ministry said an Irish man had also been freed. In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the US administration was "concerned about reports of loss of life and are seeking clarity from the government of Algeria". 'Brutal aggression' The fighters, communicating through media in neighbouring Mauritania, said they had dozens of men armed with mortars and anti-aircraft missiles in the compound and had rigged it with explosives. "We hold the Algerian government and the French government and the countries of the hostages fully responsible if our demands are not met, and it is up to them to stop the brutal aggression against our people in Mali," read one statement carried by Mauritanian media. A Briton and an Algerian were killed on Wednesday, after fighters launched an ambush of a bus carrying employees from the gas plant to the nearby airport. The In Amenas gas field is jointly operated by British oil giant BP, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's Sonatrach. France launched a major offensive against the rebel group Ansar al-Dine in Mali on January 11 to prevent them from advancing on the capital, Bamako. Algeria had long warned against military intervention against the rebels, fearing the violence could spill over the border. |
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/01/201311719454517593.html
Hostages reportedly killed as Algerian desert standoff ends
By Anthony Faiola and Michael Birnbaum,
LONDON — Algerian forces launched a final assault Saturday against Islamist militants holding foreign hostages at a desert energy complex, resulting in the deaths of 11 kidnappers and their seven remaining captives, according to Algerian and French news reports.Reports of the raid — which unfolded despite calls for restraint from foreign governments, including the United States, whose nationals were being held captive — remained sketchy and unverified, but state media said the operation targeted a remaining stronghold of militants at the sprawling, remote facility run by BP, Norway’s Statoil and Algeria’s state-run energy company. Reports from Algeria’s state news agency and France’s AFP, both quoting an unnamed Algerian security official, suggested the militants may have killed their hostages as forces approached.
“The [army] assault took place mid-morning,” the AFP quoted the security official as saying. “Eleven terrorists lost their lives along with the foreign hostages. We think they were killed in retaliation” for the army attack.
Earlier reports suggested that the heavily armed militants were holding two Americans, three Belgians, a Japanese and a Briton in one section of the compound. Government forces were also still searching for smaller bands of militants and captives in the warren-like facility fitted with a complex network of potentially explosive gas pipes.
The state-run gas and oil company Sonatrach said Saturday that the troops discovered after the raid that the plant had been mined, the Algerian state news wire reported.
“Following the intervention of the Algerian military forces on the gas plant at Tiguentourine and the dislodging of the terrorists, it was found that the plant had been mined with the intention of exploding it,” the statement said. “A major clearance operation is in progress by specialized teams of the Algerian army ahead of the launching of startup operations at the plant.”
The United States, Japan and European nations had urged caution after an Algerian military rescue effort on Thursday left at least 12 hostages and 18 militants dead. An Algerian government spokesman told local reporters that the military was seeking a “peaceful solution” and was apparently in talks to free the remaining hostages.
“We have made offers of assistance. The Algerians have dealt with the situation themselves,” Britain’s Foreign Minister William Hague said Saturday. He added: “This has been and remains an Algerian operation, and our priority is the safety and the welfare of our nationals.”
Nearly 670 hostages have been freed or escaped since armed Islamist militants seized the facility on Wednesday, although roughly two dozen mostly foreign plant workers remain unaccounted for — including 6 Statoil employees. The situation “is still unresolved and there is limited access to the area,” Statoil said in a statement Saturday. “This is an unimaginable tragedy.”
In remarks on Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton avoided criticizing Algeria’s handling of the situation but made it clear that her priority now was careful negotiations, not a guns-blasting assault.
“The utmost care must be taken to preserve innocent life,” Clinton said.“When I spoke with the prime minister, I urged the utmost care be taken in the protection of the hostages, Algerian and expatriate foreign hostages.”
Survivors’ accounts
Survivors of one of the largest hostage crises in recent memory recounted harrowing tales of their ordeal Friday, as Algerian security forces attempted late in the day to negotiate an end to the standoff at a natural gas facility in the Sahara desert.
Some workers described being forced to strap on explosives-filled belts when Islamist militants stormed the site Wednesday. Others were shot on the spot.
Survivors narrated close escapes, even as Algerian military forces continued to sweep the sprawling compound for remaining captives.
One escaped worker, Stephen McFaul, said through a family spokesman that he initially avoided capture. McFaul, who is from Northern Ireland, locked himself in a room at the compound in the hopes of avoiding detection, said John Morrisey, a family spokesman briefed about the ordeal.
Over the course of the day, however, he was discovered and taken hostage, a fact he revealed to his worried wife and mother through brief telephone calls back home to West Belfast on Thursday morning.
As the militants prepared to move hostages to a more secure area later Thursday, McFaul was loaded on to one of several Jeeps, according to the family spokesman. But as the vehicles moved away, Algerian helicopters closed in on the convoy, raining down a barrage of heavy artillery that directly hit and severely damaged most of the vehicles, causing the one McFaul was traveling in to overturn.
McFaul, Morrisey said, then scrambled away from the wreckage through the window and managed to escape. He was scheduled to land Friday evening in London.
“He is still very worried about those still back in Algeria, but as you can imagine, he is looking forward to getting home,” Morrisey said.
Hundreds of captives appear to have been released, with the first of the British survivors landing late Friday at London’s Gatwick Airport via a transport flight chartered by energy giant BP.
Algerian TV broadcast images of survivors on Friday, with some Turkish and Filipino workers at a hospital bandaged and burned and others jubilantly hugging. Weary-looking British workers boarded a bus, where they expressed relief that they were going home.
Algeria’s state-run news service on Friday painted a chaotic picture of the ongoing crisis, with militants reportedly taking more than 650 hostages on Wednesday.
“I heard a lot of gunshots, and an alarm telling us to stay where we were,” Alexandre Berceaux, a catering contractor, told French radio station Europe 1 on Friday by telephone. Once he realized the danger, he said, he barricaded himself into his room to try to keep himself safe.
“I stayed hidden for almost 40 hours in my room, under my bed. I put planks everywhere just in case,” he said.
Then, on Thursday, relief came, Berceaux said: his compatriots, accompanied by men in green uniforms.
The Algerian news service said that the military had used “missiles, rocket launchers, grenades, machine guns and assault rifles” to free virtually all of the 573 Algerian hostages, along with 100 of the 132 foreign nationals from eight different countries, including the United States.
At least one American at the complex, Frederick Buttaccio, a Texas resident, died at the complex, according to State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
A timeline emerges
Echoing the dismay of many governments representing the foreign hostages, British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday told Parliament that he had not been given advance notice of the Algerian operation.
Cameron laid out the fullest official timeline yet of the crisis that began at dawn on Wednesday, saying groups backed by the one-eyed Islamist militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar launched their attack on transit buses on the isolated compound near In Amenas that left two dead. The militants then fanned out, seizing both a residential compound as well as a gas pumping facility, holding a still-unknown number of hostages.
Cameron said the British were not informed of the Algerian strike against the militants that began early Thursday, saying he only learned of it while on the phone with his Algerian counterpart. He said the Algerians insisted they had to act fast.
“They judged there to be an immediate threat to the hostages,” he said.
A senior French official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to address sensitive issues, said that Algerian authorities have not been forthcoming about tallies of the dead and rescued.
Extremists’ demands
The Mauritanian news agency ANI, which has been in contact with the extremists who have asserted responsibility for the siege, said the group has offered to release its remaining American hostages in exchange for two high-profile prisoners being held in the United States.
ANI said the militants are seeking the release of Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui, convicted in a U.S. court in 2010 of the attempted murder of U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, and Egyptian Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik convicted on terrorism charges.
The news agency also quoted a spokesman for the “Masked Brigade,” the Islamist group allegedly behind the attack on the gas complex. The group was affiliated with the umbrella organization known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), but it reportedly broke with AQIM last month, according to terrorism experts in France.
Quoting unnamed sources, the Mauritanian news agency described the hostage takers as being from Algeria, Canada, Mali, Egypt, Niger and Mauritania.
The spokesman linked the attack to Western efforts to help the government of Mali fight Islamist insurgents and warned that the group would carry out “more operations.” He called on Algerians to stay away from installations operated by foreign companies, because “we will spring up where nobody expects it,” the news agency said.
The U.S. military said Friday that one of its medical planes flew to Algeria to evacuate between 10 and 20 freed or rescued hostages. The former hostages will be transported to “a U.S. facility” in Europe, said Tom Saunders, a spokesman for the U.S. Africa Command, which is based in Stuttgart, Germany.
One Algerian engineer told the France Info radio station on Friday that the captors were interested only in the foreign employees. “They came into the bedrooms,” one said. “They broke down the doors. They were shouting: ‘We’re only looking for the expatriates! The Algerians can leave!’ They rounded up the expats. . . . They tied them up.”
Birnbaum reported from Berlin. Edward Cody in Paris, Sari Horwitz in Washington and Craig Whitlock and Eliza Mackintosh in London contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/hostages-reportedly-killed-as-algerian-desert-standoff-ends/2013/01/19/e08b2002-6244-11e2-a389-ee565c81c565_print.html
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