Horror of Algerian hostage crisis revealed

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The gas plant at Amenas is giving up its secrets as Algerian special forces picking their way through the vast complex find dozens of bodies, some charred beyond recognition in the bloody end-game to one of the worst hostage crises in years.

Almost a week after 40 jihadist fighters raided the desert facility not far from the Libyan border and Algeria responded with a full-on military operation to kill or capture them, a picture of what happened is beginning to emerge.

While some of the hostages escaped in the early stages of the crisis, hopes faded for dozens of others, foreign workers and Algerians, once the army decided to take on the raiders.

Those who escaped had harrowing tales to tell. One Briton recounted how the attackers had strapped Semtex plastic explosive to his neck, bound his hands and taped his mouth shut. Another man hid for more than a day and a half under his bed as jihadist fighters searched the workers’ residential complex.

Algerian sources said the attackers had come from Libya, but two of the Islamist fighters whose bodies were recovered appeared to be Canadian.

Workers from the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Romania, Norway and the Philippines were either dead or missing, with the overall death toll among hostages and militants put at 81 and rising.

The Amenas gas plant probably felt impregnable to many who worked there — fenced in, hundreds of miles from anywhere and with the Algerian army patrolling its desert approaches.

That was a mirage. Libya, an ex-police state turned arms bazaar and now open for jihad, lies just 80km away. And in any case, the enemy was probably already inside the gates.

The militants arrived in nine Toyotas with Libyan plates and painted in the colours of Sonatrach, the Algerian oil and gas company that has a share in the plant, according to the Algerian daily El Khabar.

“They had local cooperation, I’m sure, maybe from drivers or security guards, who helped the terrorists get into the base,” said Anis Rahmani, editor of Algeria’s Ennahar newspaper and a writer on security issues who said he was briefed by officials.

Locally hired workers who escaped told of seeing the gunmen moving around the sprawling facility with confidence, apparently familiar with its layout and well prepared.

The militants said they launched the raid to halt French military intervention in neighbouring Mali, however, several European and US officials said the assault seems too elaborate to have been planned in such a short time.

First word of trouble came crackling over a walkie-talkie to the communications room at Amenas, where a radio operator called Azedine logged a contact with a bus driver who, at 5.45am (0445 GMT), left to take some foreigners to the airstrip at the town of In Amenas, some 50km away. “Moments after the bus left, I heard shooting, a lot of shooting, and then nothing,” Azedine said.

Two people, one British, one Algerian were killed on two buses heading for the airport. It is not clear whether that incident was part of the plan that secured the militants access to the compound. Almost immediately after the bus skirmish, they were inside, in at least three vehicles.

The first Briton to die was identified as a Gulf war veteran who had been in the French Foreign Legion and was working for a security company.

People who have worked at the site, which sits with its back to cliffs in the dunes, say there was normally an overnight curfew, leaving it unclear how the gunmen were able to get so close before being challenged.

Azedine saw a gunman put on the ID badge of a French supervisor who had been shot dead.

A French catering firm employee spent 40 hours cowering alone under his bed, terrified he would be killed. Alexandre Berceaux said he had survived by staying in his room away from other foreigners, hidden behind a barricade of wooden planks and having Algerian colleagues sneak him food and water.

Pulled to safety on Thursday evening with other foreigners by Algerian soldiers, Berceaux had been so scared of being discovered that he only opened his bedroom door if the person knocking gave a secret password.

Rapidly the area was surrounded by heavily armed Algerian troops, with tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopter gunships from a nearby military base. The government in Algiers said it would not negotiate.

People who know the site, operated by Britain’s BP and Statoil of Norway along with Algeria’s state energy company, Sonatrach, said a barracks housing several hundred soldiers lies along the 3km of road separating the accommodation compound from the industrial plant.

A former senior Algerian government official said guards appeared to have been caught napping.

But he also acknowledged the militants may have had help among the local workforce.

Once inside the facility, militants, including bearded, ragged fighters and others in more urban dress, herded groups of Westerners together. Hundreds of Algerians were guarded more loosely. One Algerian worker told Reuters the gunmen said they were only interested in killing “Christians and infidels”.

Several former hostages described the attackers, from their accents, as appearing to be Libyan or Egyptian as well as Algerian. Officials said many of the dead gunmen were foreign.

In what appears to have been the deadliest part of the siege, as described by the family of Irish survivor Stephen McFaul, government forces bombed the convoy, blasting apart four vehicles full of hostages. McFaul was in a fifth truck which crashed. He dashed for his life and escaped, and believes all those in the other vehicles were killed.

McFaul told how the attackers had turned him into a human bomb, strapping Semtex round his neck.

During Thursday, most of the hundreds of people at the site were able to flee, some of them Westerners posing as Algerians.

Western capitals seemed to be in the dark when the dramatic and bloody final assault came on Saturday morning.

Algerian soldiers shot dead 11 gunmen who had executed seven foreign hostages, according to the state news agency. The militants were then found to have booby-trapped the gas complex with explosives, which the army had to defuse. Home