41 westerners taken hostage in algeria

[sam13371337]

Islamists seize 41 hostages at Algeria gas plant

By Beatrice Khadige (AFP)–40 minutes ago

ALGIERS — Islamist gunmen killed two people and took 41 Western hostages Wednesday in Algeria in what they said was a revenge attack on the country for opening its airspace to French warplanes hitting Islamists in Mali.

The Islamists, who said they entered Algeria from northern Mali, told Mauritanian media they were holding 41 Westerners including French, British and Japanese citizens, as well as seven Americans, at a southern gas field.

One Briton and an Algerian were killed in the attack, Algeria's Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia said. Six people were wounded: another Briton, a Norwegian and a Scot, as well as an Algerian security agent and two policemen.

Britain said it was working closely with Algeria over the crisis.

The In Amenas gas field is jointly operated by British oil giant BP, Norway's Statoil and state-run Algerian energy firm Sonatrach. Production was shut down after the attack.

A worker at the scene told AFP by phone that the armed group was demanding freedom for 100 Islamists held in Algeria in exchange for the Western hostages.

"The assailants have demanded that these Islamists be taken to northern Mali," he said.

A group calling itself "Signatories for Blood" claimed the action in a post to the Mauritanian website Alakhbar.

It was in retaliation both for the French intervention in Mali and for Algeria's cooperation, it said.

"Algeria was chosen for this operation to teach (Algerian President Abdelaziz) Bouteflika that we will never accept the humiliation of the Algerian people's honour... by opening Algerian airspace to French planes," it said.

The group called for an end to the French action against the insurgents in Mali.

The Algerian interior minister, speaking on national television, insisted Algiers would not negotiate with the "terrorists", who he said were surrounded by the army and security services.

The group appeared to want to leave the country with the hostages, which Algiers had rejected, he said. They were "around 20 men from the region," he added, denying that they had come from either Mali or Libya.

The attack took place at dawn, when armed Islamists targeted a bus carrying oil workers to the In Amenas airport, the interior ministry said. Repelled by security escorts, they instead took hostages at the gas field's residential compound.

BP confirmed in a statement that the In Amenas gas complex had been attacked at around 0500 GMT.

A Statoil official said 12 employees, including nine Norwegians, had been "implicated" in the hostage-taking, without elaborating. The company said it had just under 20 staff members at the facility.

-- 'Many lives at stake' --

A French catering company said 150 of its Algerian employees were being held at the complex.

"The information I have is that a group of around 60 terrorists from neighbouring countries attacked the base overnight," said CIS Catering's executive director Regis Arnoux.

"They took all the expatriates hostage, regardless of nationality, and tied them up. The Algerian staff are being held inside the site," he told French newspaper the Journal du Dimanche.

"We fear the worst, there are many lives at stake," he added.

Algerian news agency APS said Algerian hostages were later freed, without saying how many.

Japanese engineering firm JGC said five Japanese workers were believed to have been seized, while separate sources said a Frenchmen, an Irish citizen and a Norwegian were seized.

French news channel France 24 reported that Malaysian and Filipino nationals were also among the hostages.

The US State Department confirmed that American citizens were being held. The White House said it was "closely monitoring" the situation.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said London was in close touch with Algiers.

"A number of people are held hostage. This does include a number of British nationals. This is therefore an extremely dangerous situation," Hague said.

One of the attackers told AFP by telephone: "We are members of Al-Qaeda and we came from northern Mali."

An Islamist spokesman told Mauritanian media the attack was "a reaction to Algeria's flagrant interference in allowing French planes into its airspace to launch raids on northern Mali."

Five hostages were being held at the gas plant, while the others were in a housing complex on the site, he added.

France launched a major offensive against the jihadists in Mali on January 11 to prevent them from advancing on the capital Bamako.

Algeria announced on Tuesday it had closed its border with Mali, following the French offensive against Al-Qaeda in its southern neighbour, but the 2,000-kilometre (1,200-mile) desert frontier is almost impossible to seal.

On Saturday, Algeria expressed its "unequivocal support" for Mali's transitional authorities. A day later Paris said Algiers had authorised overflights by France-based Rafale fighter jets for the operation there.

[nucklehead]

/topic/338321-islamists-on-the-march-in-mali-canada-sends-1-cargo-plane/">http://forum.canucks.com/topic/338321-islamists-on-the-march-in-mali-canada-sends-1-cargo-plane/

[sam13371337]

it's a little ironic given how the west were supporting these people to overthrow the libyan government.

Now libya is a failed state, mali will soon become one. And islamists have gained a major footstep in a strategic area and access to unlimited weapons.

Good job NATO.

[sam13371337]

/topic/338321-islamists-on-the-march-in-mali-canada-sends-1-cargo-plane/">http://forum.canucks...-1-cargo-plane/

[Richard Parker]

it's a little ironic given how the west were supporting these people to overthrow the libyan government.

Now libya is a failed state, mali will soon become one. And islamists have gained a major footstep in a strategic area and access to unlimited weapons.

Good job NATO.

[taxi]

it's a little ironic given how the west were supporting these people to overthrow the libyan government.

Now libya is a failed state, mali will soon become one. And islamists have gained a major footstep in a strategic area and access to unlimited weapons.

Good job NATO.

[Lancaster]

When the West gets involved, some folks get mad.

When the West don't get involved, some folks get mad.

[Wetcoaster]

Algerian special forces have stormed the gas plant but the death and injury toll is still unclear.

Algerian helicopters and special forces stormed a gas plant in the stony plains of the Sahara on Thursday to wipe out Islamist militants and free hostages from at least 10 countries. Bloody chaos ensued, leaving the fate of the fighters and many of the captives uncertain.

Dueling claims from the military and the militants muddied the world's understanding of an event that angered Western leaders, raised world oil prices and complicated the international military operation in neighboring Mali.

At least six people, and perhaps many more, were killed — Britons, Filipinos and Algerians. Terrorized hostages from Ireland and Norway trickled out of the Ain Amenas plant, families urging them never to return.

Dozens more remained unaccounted for: Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians and the fighters themselves.

The U.S. government sent an unmanned surveillance drone to the BP-operated site, near the border with Libya and 1,290 kilometers from the Algerian capital, but it could do little more than watch Thursday's intervention. Algeria's army-dominated government, hardened by decades of fighting Islamist militants, shrugged aside foreign offers of help and drove ahead alone.

With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces moved in, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to diplomats, a website close to the militants, and an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.

The militants — led by a Mali-based al-Qaeda offshoot known as the Masked Brigade — suffered losses in Thursday's military assault, but succeeded in garnering a global audience.

Gas plant seized Wednesday

Even violence-scarred Algerians were stunned by the brazen hostage-taking Wednesday, the biggest in northern Africa in years and the first to include Americans as targets. Mass fighting in the 1990s had largely spared the lucrative oil and gas industry that gives Algeria its economic independence and regional weight.

Casualty figures in the Algerian standoff varied widely. The remote location is extremely hard to reach and was surrounded by Algerian security forces — who, like the militants, are inclined to advertise their successes and minimize their failures.

"An important number of hostages were freed and an important number of terrorists were eliminated, and we regret the few dead and wounded," Algeria's communications minister, Mohand Said Oubelaid, told national media, adding that the "terrorists are multinational," coming from several different countries with the goal of "destabilizing Algeria, embroiling it in the Mali conflict and damaging its natural gas infrastructure."

The official news agency said four hostages were killed in Thursday's operation, two Britons and two Filipinos. Two others, a Briton and an Algerian, died Wednesday in an ambush on a bus ferrying foreign workers to an airport. Citing hospital officials, the APS news agency said six Algerians and seven foreigners were injured.

APS said some 600 local workers were safely freed in the raid — but many of those were reportedly released the day before by the militants themselves.

The militants, via a Mauritanian news website, claimed that 35 hostages and 15 militants died in the helicopter strafing. A spokesman for the Masked Brigade told the Nouakchott Information Agency in Mauritania that only seven hostages survived.

By nightfall, Algeria's government said the raid was over. But the whereabouts of the rest of the plant workers was unclear.

U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron spoke on the phone to share their confusion. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration was "seeking clarity from the government of Algeria."

Militants earlier said they were holding seven Americans, but the administration confirmed only that Americans were among those taken. The U.S. government was in contact with American businesses across North Africa and the Middle East to help them guard against the possibility of copycat attacks.

BP, the Norwegian company Statoil and the Algerian state oil company Sonatrach, operate the gas field and a Japanese company, JGC Corp, provides services for the facility.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe protested the military raid as an act that "threatened the lives of the hostages," according to a spokesman.

Jean-Christophe Gray, a spokesman for Cameron, said Britain was not informed in advance of the raid.

One Irish hostage managed to escape: electrician Stephen McFaul, who'd worked in North Africa's oil and natural gas fields off and on for 15 years. His family said the militants let hostages call their families to press the kidnappers' demands.

"He phoned me at 9 o'clock to say al-Qaeda were holding him, kidnapped, and to contact the Irish government, for they wanted publicity. Nightmare, so it was. Never want to do it again. He'll not be back! He'll take a job here in Belfast like the rest of us," said his mother, Marie.

No negotiations with militants

Algerian forces who had ringed the Ain Amenas complex had vowed not to negotiate with the militants, who reportedly were seeking safe passage. Security experts said the end of the two-day standoff was in keeping with the North African country's tough approach to terrorism.

Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kabila said the 20-odd militants entered the country from nearby Libya in three vehicles, in an operation commanded by extremist mastermind Moktar Belmoktar, who is normally based in Mali.

"The Algerian authorities have expressed, many times, to the Libyan authorities, its fears and asked it a dozen times to be careful and secure borders with Algeria," Kabila was quoted as saying on the website of the newspaper Echourouk.

The militants made it clear that their attack was fallout from the intervention in Mali. One commander, Oumar Ould Hamaha, said they were now "globalizing the conflict" in revenge for the military assault on Malian soil.

Dueling claims from the military and the militants muddied the world's understanding of an event that angered Western leaders, raised world oil prices and complicated the international military operation in neighboring Mali.

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...atural-gas.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/01/17/algeria-hostages-kidnap-natural-gas.html' rel="external nofollow">

[canuck_trevor16]

should send US Navy SEALS to rescue?

[aeromotacanucks]

should send US Navy SEALS to rescue?

[Charlie.the.Unicorn]

SEND IN LIAM NEESON!!

[taxi]

I´m not sure if USA wants another problem with islamists...

[Salmonberries]

I here them Westerners are pretty good at takin' care of themselves.

[hockeyfan87]

These people are going to hate the USA regardless of what they do. The only risk the USA runs is if their operation results in the death of innocent civilians from the local area. It would put locals on the side of the islamists.

[Dittohead]

When the West gets involved, The same folks get mad.

When the West don't get involved, The same folks get mad.

[Dittohead]

here's some insight...

http://www.liveleak....=7ef_1358465952

[Dittohead]

It's Over Looks like Algeria Government plan to end it is to Kill everyone.

http://www.aljazeera...9454517593.html

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, Reuters news agency has quoted an Algerian security source as saying.

Eight Algerians and seven foreigners, including two British, two Japanese and a French national, were among the dead, the source said.

Algerian state television reported earlier that four foreigners had been killed after the end of the operation was announced late on Thursday.

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.

Earlier, a spokesman for the group holding the hostages said 34 of the captives had been killed along with 15 kidnappers as a government helicopter attacked a convoy transporting hostages and their captors.

[Wetcoaster]

It is now being reported that the raid was botched and at least 30 hostages have been killed. Reports are that the hostages were used as human shields and the Algerian troops were firing indiscriminately and killed a number of hostages.

At least thirty hostages who were being held by Islamist militants in Algeria were killed in a botched air raid by Algerian forces, a security source said Thursday.

The raid, which was carried out in Algerian helicopters and special forces, was meant to wipe out the al-Qaeda-linked militants and free the 41 hostages from at least 10 countries, but instead left up to 30 people, including several Westerns, dead.

Militants said that seven Americans were taken hostage, and claimed only two survived the strafing on Thursday. Sources said that the Obama administration was not aware of the raid ahead of time.

What ensued was bloody chaos at the isolated plant 800 miles south of the capital, Algiers, leaving the fate of many of the captives and the fighters uncertain. In launching its assault, Algeria also ignored offers of help from the SAS and American special forces.

'We asked them not to go in with all guns blazing and they just did it anyway,' said one London official. 'They insisted this was their sovereign territory and it was their operation.'

French sources said the decision to go in was taken because the terrorists were executing hostages. Last night, after a fierce day of fighting, Algerian officials said the rescue operation was over. They said at least 11 Islamist militants, including Tahar Ben Cheneb, a prominent commander in the region, were among the dead, along with three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a French citizen.

A source said 30 hostages were killed, of whom the nationalities of 15 had been established. Of these, eight were Algerian and seven were foreigners, including two British, two Japanese and a French national. One Briton was killed when the terrorists seized the gas compound on Wednesday.

Fierce gun battles erupted as troops moved in on the Islamists and there were claims that hostages had been used as human shields. An eyewitness described a scene of carnage, saying: 'There were bodies all over the ground.'

Another spoke of Algerian forces firing at 'anything that moved'.

The Obama administration appeared to be in the dark Thursday about the hostage situation at the natural gas plant deep in the Sahara Desert. An administrative official told the Associated Press that the U.S. was not aware of the raid to free the hostages in advance.

Mr Obama’s administration was offering no details about how many American hostages had been taken and whether they were still in captivity – or even alive. A source told the AP that while some U.S. citizens escaped, others remained missing or unaccounted for.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said U.S. counterterrorism officials were in touch with their Algerian counterparts and that she planned to speak Thursday with Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal for the second time in as many days. She made a vague reference to ongoing U.S. 'planning,' without elaborating.

'The security of our Americans who are held hostage is our highest priority,' Clinton told reporters. 'Because of the fluidity and the fact that there is a lot of planning going on, I cannot give you any further details.

'This is a serious and sensitive situation,' Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in England. Little said military officials were actively seeking information, and that Panetta had been briefed by senior military officials.

Ahead of the raid, U.S. officials had been urging the Algerians to be cautious in their actions, but did not know a rescue mission was planned, said the administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Militants earlier said they were holding seven Americans, but the administration confirmed only that Americans were among those taken.

'We are deeply concerned about any loss of innocent life and are seeking clarity from the government of Algeria,' White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

During her conversation with Algeria's prime minister Wednesday, Clinton expressed Washington's 'willingness to be helpful,' State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. They also discussed what type of assistance might be needed, Nuland added, but declined to provide details.

A local worker said from his home Thursday that the Islamist gunmen of the ‘Battalion of Blood’ told the terrified staff that they would not harm Muslims but would kill ‘Christians and infidels.’

Last night, as the military operation to rescue those captured ended, a local worker revealed how the militants appeared to have a clear strategy for their prisoners – some of whom even ended up having explosives strapped to their chest.

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, told the Mail from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. '"We will kill them," they said.'

The U.S. government sent an unmanned surveillance drone to the BP-operated site, near the border with Libya and 800 miles (1,290 kilometers) from the Algerian capital, but it could do little more than watch Thursday's intervention. Algeria's army-dominated government, hardened by decades of fighting Islamist militants, shrugged aside foreign offers of help and drove ahead alone.

With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces moved in, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to diplomats, a website close to the militants, and an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.

The militants — led by a Mali-based al-Qaida offshoot known as the Masked Brigade — suffered losses in Thursday's military assault, but succeeded in garnering a global audience.

Even violence-scarred Algerians were stunned by the brazen hostage-taking Wednesday, the biggest in northern Africa in years and the first to include Americans as targets. Mass fighting in the 1990s had largely spared the lucrative oil and gas industry that gives Algeria its economic independence and regional weight.

The hostage-taking raised questions about security for sites run by multinationals that are dotted across Africa's largest country. It also raised the prospect of similar attacks on other countries allied against the extremist warlords and drug traffickers who rule a vast patch of desert across several countries in northwest Africa. Even the heavy-handed Algerian response may not deter groups looking for martyrdom and attention.

Casualty figures in the Algerian standoff varied widely. The remote location is extremely hard to reach and was surrounded by Algerian security forces — who, like the militants, are inclined to advertise their successes and minimize their failures.

'An important number of hostages were freed and an important number of terrorists were eliminated, and we regret the few dead and wounded,' Algeria's communications minister, Mohand Said Oubelaid, told national media, adding that the 'terrorists are multinational,' coming from several different countries with the goal of 'destabilizing Algeria, embroiling it in the Mali conflict and damaging its natural gas infrastructure.'

The official news agency said four hostages were killed in Thursday's operation, two Britons and two Filipinos. Two others, a Briton and an Algerian, died Wednesday in an ambush on a bus ferrying foreign workers to an airport. Citing hospital officials, the APS news agency said six Algerians and seven foreigners were injured.

APS said some 600 local workers were safely freed in the raid — but many of those were reportedly released the day before by the militants themselves.

The militants, via a Mauritanian news website, claimed that 35 hostages and 15 militants died in the helicopter strafing. A spokesman for the Masked Brigade told the Nouakchott Information Agency in Mauritania that only seven hostages survived.

By nightfall, Algeria's government said the raid was over. But the whereabouts of the rest of the plant workers was unclear.

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron spoke on the phone to share their confusion. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration was 'seeking clarity from the government of Algeria.'

An unarmed American surveillance drone soared overhead as the Algerian forces closed in, U.S. officials said. The U.S. offered military assistance Wednesday to help rescue the hostages but the Algerian government refused, a U.S. official said in Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the offer.

Militants earlier said they were holding seven Americans, but the administration confirmed only that Americans were among those taken. The U.S. government was in contact with American businesses across North Africa and the Middle East to help them guard against the possibility of copycat attacks

BP, the Norwegian company Statoil and the Algerian state oil company Sonatrach, operate the gas field and a Japanese company, JGC Corp, provides services for the facility.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe protested the military raid as an act that 'threatened the lives of the hostages,' according to a spokesman.

Jean-Christophe Gray, a spokesman for Cameron, said Britain was not informed in advance of the raid.

Diplomats privately described the fiasco as the most serious hostage crisis since Iran seized 52 American officials in 1979.

Norway's prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, summed up the anger and frustration felt by Western governments and said too he had been in constant contact with Mr Sellal.

'My message was that concern for the lives and health of the hostages had to go first,' he said. 'That was also the attitude of David Cameron. Our desire was that they showed restraint.

'We all feel deep anxiety of not knowing what has happened to our citizens and the other hostages. I feel for the families. What has happened is abominable.'

The militant group believed to be holding the hostages has claimed that it carried out the attack in retaliation for the French military intervention against Al Qaeda-backed rebels in neighbouring Mali.

NOTE - graphic photos at the link.

http://www.dailymail...o=feeds-newsxml

[Dittohead]

^^ Old news

[MoneypuckOverlord]

sad news. very very very sad news. There's really nothing anyone else in the world can do. It is impossible for anyone to save these hostages to some extent. Maybe some lives would have been saved if a special force group went in, such us the Navy seals, or even our very own JTF2. It's a very tough operation, and very risky.