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.
Louafi Larbi/Reuters
A freed Norwegian hostage was escorted to a police station in the town of In Amenas on Saturday, near the gas field complex.
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.
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.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 19, 2013
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the nationality of a government official who said security forces were searching the gas complex. The official is Algerian, not Turkish.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Algeria Begins ‘Final Assault’ on Gas Field; 7 Hostages Reported Killed
Dengan url
https://dunialuasekali.blogspot.com/2013/01/algeria-begins-afinal-assaulta-on-gas.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Algeria Begins ‘Final Assault’ on Gas Field; 7 Hostages Reported Killed
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Algeria Begins ‘Final Assault’ on Gas Field; 7 Hostages Reported Killed
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar