Algeria raid: More workers at risk

Algerian special forces are continuing to hunt Islamist militants who overran a BP gas plant as freed hostages headed home.
As the stand-off at the remote desert facility entered a fourth day it was thought more workers remained “at risk”.

The Algerian state news agency APS reported last night a “provisional” figure of 12 foreign and Algerian workers who had been killed in the fighting at the plant at In Amenas.

It said about 100 foreign workers had been released from a total of 132 seized by the militants had been freed – along with 573 local employees.

Eighteen of the militants were also reported to have been killed – suggesting that around a dozen of the original group of about 30 could still be at large.

A Mauritanian news site reported that the remaining militants were demanding the release of two terrorists held in the United States, including 1993 World Trade Centre bombing mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman, in return for the release of two US captives.

Despite the casualties among the hostages, an Algerian government source quoted by APS strongly defended the military operation, saying it had prevented a “true disaster” which would have caused “immeasurable” human and material damage.

The rescue mission had been carried out in “extremely complex circumstances” against terrorists armed with a huge arsenal of missiles, rocket launchers, grenades, and assault rifles, the source said.

Swift action, the source added, was the “only way to minimise or neutralise the deadly intent of the multinational terrorists – but not without the inevitable risks in all such situations”.

Meanwhile, the al Qaida-linked Masked Brigade behind the operation offered to trade two American hostages for two terrorists behind bars in the US, including the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing. The US rejected the deal out of hand.

The Algerian government released few details about the continuing siege at the In Amenas plant, jointly run by BP, Norway’s Statoil and Algeria’s state-owned oil company. By yesterday, however, the outlines of the takeover by Islamic militants were coming into focus.

The attack had been in the works for two months, a member of the Masked Brigade told an online Mauritanian news outlet that often carries al Qaida-related announcements. The band of attackers included militants from Algeria, Mali, Egypt, Niger, Mauritania and Canada, he said.

He said militants targeted Algeria because they expected the country to support the international effort to root out extremists in neighbouring Mali.

Instead of passing through Algeria’s relatively well-patrolled deserts, the attackers came in from southern Libya, where there is little central government and smugglers have long reigned supreme, according to Algeria’s interior minister Daho Ould Kabila.

He said the attackers consisted of about 30 men armed with rocket launchers and machine guns and under the direct supervision of the Masked Brigade’s founder himself, Moktar Belmoktar, a hardened, one-eyed Algerian militant who has battled the Algerian government for years and has built a Saharan smuggling and kidnapping empire linked to al Qaida.

Early on Wednesday morning, they crept across the border, 60 miles from the natural gas plant, and fell on a pair of buses taking foreign workers to the airport. The buses’ military escort drove off the attackers in a blaze of gunfire that sent bullets zinging over the heads of the crouching workers. A Briton and an Algerian, probably a security guard, were killed.

Frustrated, the militants turned to the vast gas complex, divided between the workers’ living quarters and the refinery itself, and seized hostages, the Algerian government said.

Several of the former hostages, who arrived haggard-looking on a late-night flight into Algiers yesterday, said the gunfire began at around 5am and that the militants who stormed the living quarters almost immediately singled out the foreigners.

Mohammed, a 37-year-old nurse, said at least five people were shot dead, their bodies still in front of the infirmary when he left on Thursday night.

The militants declared that the takeover was prompted by France’s attacks on al Qaida-linked rebels in Mali and they demanded that the intervention end or the hostages would pay.

The takeover soon turned into a stand-off as military units from a nearby base surrounded the complex.

On Thursday afternoon, Algerian military forces saw a five-jeep convoy moving from one part of the complex to another. Fearing the kidnappers were trying to make a break for it, they sent attack helicopters into action.

The kidnappers called the Mauritanian news service ANI to say that 35 hostages and 15 of their fighters had been killed in the bloodbath – a figure that was impossible to confirm.

The kidnappers told ANI that they were trying to consolidate hostages into a single location when the Algerians attacked.

Yesterday it became clear the Algerian forces had retaken only the living quarters. Hostages and their kidnappers remained ensconced in the refinery.

An international outcry mounted over the Algerians’ handling of the crisis, but experts noted that this is how they have always dealt with terrorists. The Algerian government insisted it had to intervene to prevent a catastrophe.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton defended Algeria.

“Let’s not forget: this is an act of terror,” she said. “The perpetrators are the terrorists. They are the ones who have assaulted this facility, have taken hostage Algerians and others from around the world as they were going about their daily business.”