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Terrorist Siege at Algerian Gas Field Ends; Both Hostages and Militants Killed

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After three days of chaos and confusion, Algerian troops ended the hostage crisis at a natural gas facility on Saturday, January 19, with one last and deadly assault, according to both Algerian and Western officials.

As dozens were left dead, the kidnapping of close to 800 workers at the sprawling plant in eastern Algeria’s Sahara desert on Wednesday, January 16, by al-Qaeda linked Islamic militants fanned fears of a new terror front in Africa.

According to the Algerian interior ministry, at least 23 hostages and 32 terrorists were killed at the gas facility located in In Amenas, which is just 30 miles west of the Libyan border and is operated by Algeria’s state oil company, in cooperation with foreign firms such as Norway’s Statoil and Britain’s BP.

Claiming responsibility for the attack is a shadowy group known as “Brigade of the Masked Ones”, that is headed by longtime radical Islamic jihadist Moktar Belmoktar. who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and recently set up his own group in the Sahara after falling out with other local Qaeda leaders. Belmokhtar is known to French intelligence officials as “the Uncatchable” and to some locals as “Mister Marlboro” for his illicit cigarette-running business, according to news agency reports. His ties to Islamist extremists who seized towns across northern Mali last year are unclear. According to published reports the group claimed the kidnapping was in revenge for allowing France to use Algerian airspace for an offensive against Islamist militants in neighboring Mali. Only a day before the attack the United States pledged to provide logistical support to the six-day French-led offensive to rid Mali of al-Qaeda control over large swaths of the west African nation. French ground troops, joined by soldiers of the Malian Army, have engaged in combat with Islamist fighters and according to French officials, the military units had begun to beat back the Islamist militant advance southward from northern Mali. It was this advance that provoked the intervention ordered by President François Hollande of France.

The attack, which seemed to take foreign governments and the British and Norwegian companies that help run the facility completely by surprise, appeared to make good on a pledge by the Islamist militants who seized northern Mali last year to sharply expand their struggle against the West. The taking of hostages potentially broadened the conflict beyond Mali’s borders and raised the possibility of drawing an increasing number of foreign countries into direct involvement, particularly if expatriates working in the vast energy extraction industries of North Africa become targets. It also doubled, at least, the number of non-African hostages that Islamist militants in northern and western Africa have been using as bargaining chips to finance themselves in recent years through ransoms that have totaled millions of dollars.

An Algerian Radio report did specify the nationalities of those hostages who were killed and while it is still not clear how many people are still unaccounted for, a senior US official said two Americans were among that number. A multitude of individual nations are now scrambling to ascertain the whereabouts of its citizens. Published reports reveal that five Norwegians are missing while eight are now safe. In addition to one citizen of the UK whose death was previously announced, five British nationals are missing or feared dead. According to the French foreign ministry, there are no known French hostages unaccounted for, although one man, identified as Yann Desjeux died after telling the French newspaper Sud Quest that he and 34 other hostages belonging to nine different nationalities were being treated well. As reports continue to surface, at this juncture, a Colombian citizen is presumed dead, the Scottish government has said that eight of its citizens are safe, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that four of its citizens were freed and one died, the government of Japan has reported that 14 of their citizens are unaccounted for and among the hostages were two Malysian citizens.

Of BP’s employees, four are still missing while 14 are reported to be safe. According to the US State Department, six freed American hostages have left Algeria and one citizen, identified as Frederick Buttaccio is among the dead.

According to reports from survivors of the harrowing siege, the kidnappers who were wielding AK-47 rifles, gathered all citizens from Western countries into a group, tied them up w and put explosive-laden vests on some hostages when the crisis began on Wednesday. Some survivors their attempts to escape captivity by rigging up disguises and sneaking to safety with locals. In at least one case, a man identified as Stephen McFaul from Ireland said that he ran for his life with plastic explosives strapped around his neck. He was among a group of hostages who had been blindfolded, gagged and then packed into five Jeeps on Thursday, during Algerian forces’ first offensive. The vehicle that McFaul was in had crashed and he was able to eventually get out and contact his family.

After the overthrow of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Al-Qaeda and its affiliates expanded operations in Mali as weapons and fighters poured over the porous border last year, just as the government in Bamako collapsed. As a result, Mali, which is a US and French allied country has become a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. Until the attack on Wednesday, it had appeared that Algeria had largely been spared the instability in Libya and Mali.

A spokesman for the Brigade of the Masked Ones reportedly offered to free U.S. hostages in exchange for two prisoners on Thursday. In an interview with a private Mauritanian news agency, the spokesman said the prisoners in question are Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who orchestrated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman jailed in the United States on terrorism charges. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland rejected the offer, saying that the US does not negotiate with terrorists.

While traveling in Italy on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reports that he considered the gas-field attack a “terrorist act” and said that the United States “will take all necessary and proper steps” in response, but he offered no specifics.

With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces launched their own attack, with the aim of rescuing the hostages, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants assumed a recalcitrant position and threatened to flee with the hostages and then to blow up the facility. Despite requests for communication and pleas to consider the safety of their abducted citizens, the United States, Britain and Japan said they had not been told in advance about the military assault, stirring frustration that the Algerians might have been overly aggressive and caused needless casualties. “Those who think we will negotiate with terrorists are delusional,” the Algerian communications minister, Mohand Saïd Oublaïd. He added that, “those who think we will surrender to their blackmail are delusional.”

A European diplomat who was involved in the effort to coordinate a Western response to the hostage seizure said that the information available to the United States, France and Britain had been “confusing at best, and sometimes contradictory.” Speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s delicacy, the diplomat said that the Algerian government “cares deeply about their sovereign rights.” Even before reports of the Algerian military’s raid began to emerge, many hostages — Algerian and foreign — were reported to have escaped as the kidnappers failed to persuade the Algerian authorities to give them safe passage with their captives.

Energy experts expressed concern that the Algerian raid could signal a new strategy by Islamic militants to attack the West by focusing on Western-operated oil and gas facilities in the region. Helima Croft, a Barclays Capital senior geopolitical strategist,said if groups like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb “decide as a change in tactic they go after Western energy interests, then you have to look at a threat in all these countries, including Libya, Nigeria and Morocco.” She added that, “this type of attack had to have advanced planning. It’s not an easy target of opportunity.”

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