Algerian Forces Storm Plant to Free Hostages
By Caroline Alexander & Mariam Fam - Jan 17, 2013 8:30 AM ET
Algeria security forces stormed a gas complex in the southern desert where an al-Qaeda-linked group was holding foreign hostages, according to an official with the state-run oil company Sonatrach, who asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
Al-Jazeera television and Mauritania’s private ANI news agency reported that 35 hostages and 15 abductors were killed, citing unidentified people. The militants had been trying to move the hostages in vehicles when they came under attack, according to the ANI report.
The group said it was holding 41 foreigners abducted from a natural gas complex operated by BP Plc (BP/), Statoil ASA (STL) of Norway and Algeria’s Sonatrach, while Algerian Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia said they numbered “a little more than 20.” American, Norwegian, British and Malaysian workers were among the hostages, according to the oil companies, family members and governments, including 12 Statoil employees and an Irish national. A British citizen died in the attack, APS said.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron spoke with Norwegian and Japanese lawmakers, and the companies involved at the complex, and decided it was right for Algerians to be in the lead of efforts to end the crisis, Cameron’s spokesman Jean-Christophe Gray told reporters today.
“The prime minister made very clear that we would consider any requests that they made for assistance,” Gray said. “We need to do all we can to ensure the safety of all the hostages of all nationalities.”
French Intervention
The militant group, calling itself the “Signatories by Blood,” is demanding France end its military attacks in Mali, according to ANI.
French ground troops advanced in Mali yesterday to engage Islamist fighters and ethnic Touareg separatists that have taken control of the northern half of the nation and were moving toward the capital, Bamako. France has committed 1,700 troops to the mission, including 800 deployed in the country.
The group said it would kill the hostages if the Algerian army tried to liberate them by force, ANI today cited an unidentified spokesman as saying.
“This is exactly what Algeria was fearing,” James D. Le Sueur, a history professor specializing in Algeria at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, said in a phone interview. “They were afraid that any incursion in Mali would cause a resurgence of al-Qaeda.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net; Tarek El-Tablawy in Cairo at teltablawy@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
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