Algeria ends desert siege, but dozens killed
2013-01-18 07:41
Algiers - Algerian forces stormed a desert gas complex to
free hundreds of hostages but 30, including several Westerners, were killed in
the assault along with at least 11 of their Islamist 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.
And while a crisis has ended that posed a serious dilemma
for Paris and its allies as French troops attacked the hostage-takers' al-Qaeda
allies in neighbouring Mali, it 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. Some 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.
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.
Multinational Islamist insurgency
"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 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 spokesperson 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 at least 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 spokesperson that he would have liked
Algeria to have consulted before the raid.
A Briton and an Algerian had also been killed on Wednesday.
The prime minister of Norway, whose state energy company
Statoil runs the Tigantourine gas field with Britain's BP and Algeria's
national oil company, said he too was not informed.
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.
Foreign firms were pulling non-essential staff out of the
country, which has recovered stability only in recent years and whose ruling
establishment, heirs to fighters who ended French rule 50 years ago, has
resisted demands for reform and political freedoms of the kind that swept North
Africa in the Arab Spring.
"The embarrassment for the government is great,"
said Azzedine Layachi, an Algerian political scientist at New York's St John's
University. "The heart of Algeria's economy is in the south where the oil
and gas fields are. For this group to have attacked there, in spite of
tremendous security, is remarkable."
"Kill infidels"
A local man who had escaped from the facility told Reuters
the militants appeared to have inside knowledge of the layout of the complex,
supporting the view of security experts that their raid was long-planned, even
if the Mali war provided a motive.
"The terrorists told us at the very start that they
would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and
infidels," Abdelkader, 53, said by telephone from his home in the nearby
town of In Amenas. "'We will kill them,' they said."
Algiers, whose leaders have long had frosty relations with
the former colonial power France and other Western countries, may have some
explaining to do over its tactics in putting an end to a hostage crisis whose
scale was comparable to few in recent decades bar those involving Chechen
militants in Russia.
Government spokesperson sounded unapologetic, however:
"When the terrorist group insisted on leaving the facility, taking the
foreign hostages with them to neighbouring states, the order was issued to
special units to attack the position where the terrorists were
entrenched," he told state news agency APS, which said some 600 local
workers were freed.
The militants said earlier they had 41 foreign hostages.
"Army blasted hostages"
