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USANews版 - Hostages Dead in Bloody Climax to Siege in Algeria
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By ADAM NOSSITER
BAMAKO, Mali — The four-day hostage crisis in the Sahara reached a bloody
conclusion on Saturday as the Algerian Army carried out a final assault on
the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing most of the
remaining kidnappers and raising the total of hostages killed to at least 23
, Algerian officials said.
Although the government declared an end to the militants’ siege, the
authorities believed that a handful of jihadists were most likely hiding
somewhere in the sprawling complex and said that troops were hunting for
them.
The details of the desert standoff and the final battle for the plant
remained murky on Saturday night — as did information about which hostages
died and how — with even the White House suggesting that it was unclear
what had happened. In a brief statement released early Saturday night the
president said his administration would “remain in close touch with the
government of Algeria to gain a fuller understanding of what took place.”
The British defense minister, Philip Hammond, called the loss of life “
appalling and unacceptable” after reports that up to seven hostages were
killed in the final hours of the hostage crisis, and he said that the
leaders of the attack would be tracked down. The Algerian government said
that 32 militants had been killed since Wednesday, although it cautioned
that its casualty counts were provisional.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who appeared with Mr. Hammond at a news
conference in London, said he did not yet have reliable information about
the fate of the Americans at the facility, although a senior Algerian
official said two had been found “safe and sound.”
What little information trickled out was as harrowing as what had come in
the days before, when some hostages who had managed to escape told of
workers being forced to wear explosives. They also said that there were
several summary executions and that some workers had died in the military’s
initial rescue attempt.
On Saturday, Algerian officials reported that some bodies found by troops
who rushed into the industrial complex were charred beyond recognition,
making it difficult to distinguish between the captors and the captured. Two
were assumed to be workers because they were handcuffed.
Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, said that five Britons and one
British resident had died in the final rescue attempt or were unaccounted
for. He said that police forces were fanning out across Britain visiting
each of the families involved.
Most of the hundreds of workers at the plant, who come from about 25
countries, appear to have escaped sometime during the four days.
The Algerian government has been relatively silent since the start of the
crisis, releasing few details. The government faced withering international
criticism for rushing ahead with its first assault on the militants on
Thursday even as governments whose citizens were trapped inside the plant
pleaded for more time, fearing that rescue attempts might lead to workers
dying. The Algerians responded by saying they had a better understanding of
how to handle militants after fighting Islamist insurgents for years.
On Saturday, it was unclear who killed the last hostages. Initial reports
from Algerian state news media said that seven workers had been executed
during the army’s raid, but the senior government official and another high
-level official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, later
said the number killed and the cause were unknown. The early reports also
said 11 militants were killed, but later information suggested that some may
have blown themselves up.
One of the Algerian officials defended the latest military assault, saying
the government feared the militants were about to set off explosions at the
In Amenas complex.
The Algerian state oil company, Sonatrach, said that the attackers had
evidently mined the facility with the intention of blowing it up and that
the company was working to ensure the safety of the plant.
The government official, meanwhile, said that the militants had set fire to
the plant’s control tower on Friday night and that it was later
extinguished by soldiers and workers. The militants also tried to blow up a
pipeline, he said, leading officials to worry about the stocks of gas at the
plant. “The authorities were afraid they were going to blow up the
reserves,” said the official, who believed the militants had planned all
along to destroy the complex.
Whatever the goal, the message of the militant takeover of the gas complex,
in a country that has perhaps the world’s toughest record for dealing with
terrorists, seemed clear, at least to Algerian officials: the Islamist
ministate in northern Mali, now under assault by French and Malian forces,
has given a new boost to transnational terrorism. The brigade of some 32
Islamists that took the plant was multinational, Algerian officials said —
with only three Algerians in the group.
“We have indications that they originated from northern Mali,” one of the
senior officials said. “They want to establish a terrorist state.”
A Mali-based Algerian jihadist with ties to Al Qaeda, Mokhtar Belmokhtar,
has claimed responsibility through spokesmen — and is blamed by the
Algerians — for masterminding the raid.
The militants who attacked the plant said it was in retaliation for the
French troops sweeping into Mali this month to stop an advance of Islamist
rebels south toward the capital, although they later said they had been
planning an attack in Algeria for some time. The group that attacked the
plant, thought to be based in Gao, Mali, was previously little known and had
splintered last year from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al Qaeda’s
North African branch.
The gas plant is operated by Sonatrach, Norway’s Statoil and BP of Britain.
The militant takeover of the site began with heavy gunfire early Wednesday,
and continued through the fierce, helicopter-led government assault on
Thursday.
United States officials had said that “seven or eight” Americans had been
at the In Amenas field when it was seized by the militants.
One American, Frederick Buttaccio, 58, of Katy, Tex., was confirmed dead on
Friday.
On Saturday, BP announced that another American, a Texan named Mark Cobb,
who was a manager of the plant, survived. A man from Austin also survived,
according to a spokesman for Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of
Texas. It was unclear if either of the Texans who survived were the two
declared “safe and sound” early on Saturday.
In a call with reporters, Robert Dudley, BP’s chief executive, said that 18
BP employees had been at the facility during the “unprovoked attack by
heavily armed murderers” and that 14 had been evacuated safely. He said the
fate of the four other employees remained unknown.
Among the workers killed at the plant were a French citizen identified as
Yann Desjeux, who died before Saturday’s raid. An Algerian state news
agency said some Algerians had also been killed as of Friday.
One Algerian who managed to escape told France 24 television late Friday
night that the kidnappers said, “We’ve come in the name of Islam, to teach
the Americans what Islam is.” The haggard-looking man, interviewed at the
airport in Algiers, said the kidnappers then immediately executed five
hostages.
While the government has defended its actions because of its experience with
militants, one of the senior government officials acknowledged Saturday
morning that the militant attack was of a scale and complexity the country
had not experienced before.
“This one is different,” he said. “It’s of another dimension.”
Nonetheless, the brazenness of the assault — with scores of fighters
attacking one of the country’s most important gas-producing facilities —
is likely to call into question Algeria’s much vaunted security strategy in
dealing with the Islamic militants who find shelter in its southern deserts
, near the border with Mali.
The Algerians have made a virtue out of keeping a lid on these militants,
pushing them toward Mali in a strategy of modified containment, and
ruthlessly stamping them out when they attempt an attack in the Algerian
interior. So far it has worked, and Algeria’s extensive oil and gas fields,
which are essential sources of revenue, have been protected.
That relative success had allowed Algeria to take a hands-off approach to
the Islamist conquest of northern Mali in recent months, even as Western
governments pleaded with it to become more directly involved in confronting
the militants, who move across the hazy border between the two countries.
But now Algeria may have to rethink its approach, analysts suggest.
If the outcome represents a relative setback for Algeria, it could be viewed
as a victory for the Islamists who carried out the assault on the gas plant
, achieving several of their perennial goals: killing large numbers of
Westerners and disrupting states they have put on their enemies list —
including Algeria.
Indeed, a spokesman for those militants — in a report on a news site that
often carries their statements — said Friday that they planned more attacks
in Algeria.
Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare from Paris,
Elisabeth Bumiller and John F. Burns from London, Manny Fernandez and
Clifford Krauss from Houston, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.
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相关话题的讨论汇总
话题: algerian话题: said话题: militants话题: algeria话题: had