Algeria assault: 22 foreigners still missing
2013-01-18 10:44
Algiers - At least 22 foreign hostages remained unaccounted
for on Friday after Algerian forces stormed a desert gas complex to free
hundreds of captives taken by Islamist gunmen.
A further 30 hostages, including several Westerners, were
killed in the assault along with at least 11 of their captors, an Algerian
security source told Reuters.
Western leaders whose compatriots were being held did little
to disguise their irritation at being kept in the dark by Algeria before the
raid - and over its bloody outcome. French, British and Japanese staff were
among the dead, the source said.
An Irish engineer who survived said he saw four jeeps full
of hostages blown up by Algerian troops whose commanders said they moved in
about 30 hours after the siege began because the gunmen had demanded to be
allowed to take their captives abroad.
The crisis posed a serious dilemma for Paris and its allies
as French troops attacked the hostage-takers' al-Qaeda allies in neighbouring
Mali. It also left question marks over the ability of OPEC-member Algeria to
protect vital energy resources and strained its relations with Western powers.
Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among
at least seven foreigners killed, the source told Reuters. Eight dead hostages
were Algerian. The nationalities of the rest, as well as of perhaps dozens more
who escaped, were unclear. At least 600 local Algerian workers, less well
guarded, survived.
Fourteen Japanese were among those still unaccounted for by
the early hours of Friday, their Japanese employer said, while Norwegian state
energy company Statoil, which runs the Tigantourine gas field with Britain's BP
and Algeria's national oil company, said eight Norwegian employees were still
missing.
A diplomatic source said Britain had not received any
information to suggest the hostage situation had ended.
Squad leader
"The situation is still really fluid on the ground. We
have no information from the Algerian authorities that it's over," the
source said.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has cancelled part of his
trip in Southeast Asia, his first overseas trip since taking office, and is
considering flying home early due to the hostage crisis, Japan's top government
spokesperson said on Friday.
"The action of Algerian forces was regrettable,"
said Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, adding Tokyo had not been
informed of the operation in advance.
Americans, Norwegians, Romanians and an Austrian have also
been mentioned by their governments as having been captured by the militants
who called themselves the "Battalion of Blood" and had demanded
France end its week-old offensive in Mali.
Underlining the view of African and Western leaders that
they face a multinational Islamist insurgency across the Sahara - a conflict
that prompted France to send hundreds of troops to Mali last week - the
official source said only two of the 11 dead militants were Algerian, including
the squad's leader.
The bodies of three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a
Malian and a Frenchman - all assumed to have been hostage-takers, were found,
the security source said.
The group had claimed to have dozens of guerrillas on site
and it was unclear whether any militants had managed to escape.
The overall commander, Algerian officials said, was Mokhtar
Belmokhtar, a veteran of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria's bloody civil
war of the 1990s. He appears not to have been present and has now risen in
stature among a host of Saharan Islamists, flush with arms and fighters from
chaotic Libya, whom Western powers fear could spread violence far beyond the
desert.
"No to blackmail"
Algeria's government spokesman made clear the leadership in
Algiers remains implacably at odds with Islamist guerrillas who remain at large
in the south years after the civil war in which some 200 000 people died.
Communication Minister Mohamed Said repeated their refusal ever to negotiate
with hostage-takers.
"We say that in the face of terrorism, yesterday as
today as tomorrow, there will be no negotiation, no blackmail, no respite in
the struggle against terrorism," he told APS news agency.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, who warned people to
prepare for bad news and who cancelled a major policy speech on Friday to deal
with the situation, said through a spokesman that he would have liked Algeria
to have consulted before the raid.
A Briton and an Algerian had also been killed on Wednesday.
US officials had no clear information on the fate of
Americans, though a US military drone had flown over the area. Washington,
like its European allies, has endorsed France's move to protect the Malian
capital by mounting air strikes last week and now sending 1 400 ground troops
to attack Islamist rebels.
A US official said on Thursday it would provide transport
aircraft to help France with a mission whose vital importance, President
Francois Hollande said, was demonstrated by the attack in Algeria. Some fear,
however, that going on the offensive in the remote region could provoke more
bloodshed closer to home.
The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from
the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some
10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income,
has raised questions, over the value of security measures that are outwardly
draconian.
