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Algeria says 37 foreigners died in siege led by Canadian
[REUTERS] A total of 37 foreigners and an Algerian died at a desert gas plant and five are still missing after a four-day hostage-taking coordinated by a Canadian gunman, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalik Sellal said on Monday.

Sellal also told a news conference that 29 Islamists had been killed in the siege, which Algerian forces ended by storming the plant on Saturday, and three were taken alive. Most of the gunnies were from various states of north and west Africa.
The big question: were all of them killed or captured? Despite the pontificating, this is shaping up as a major debacle for AQIM, or at least for Mokhtar Belmokhtar. He was going to mount this big-time operation and hold 700 or so hostages until the Frenchies got out of Mali, leaving it to the turbans. That flat out didn't work.
With some bodies burned beyond recognition and Algerian forces still combing the sprawling site, some details were still unclear or at odds with figures from other governments.

The siege has shaken confidence in the security of Algeria's vital energy industry and drawn attention to Salafist Islamist militancy across the Sahara, where La Belle France has sent troops to neighboring Mali to fight rebels who have obtained weaponry from Libya.
There's some major tut-tuttery coming down the pike. Count on that.
Of the 38 dead captives, out of a total workforce of some 800 at the In Amenas gas facility, seven were still unidentified but assumed to be foreigners, Algerian premier Sellal said.

Citizens of nine countries died, he said, among them seven Japanese, six Filipinos, two Romanians, an American, a Frenchie and four Britons. Britannia said three Britons were dead and three plus a London-based Colombian were missing and believed dead. Norway said the fate of five of its citizens was unclear; in addition to seven Japanese dead, Tokyo said three were missing.

An Algerian security source had earlier told Rooters that documents found on the bodies of two cut-throats had identified them as Canadians: "A Canadian was among the bully boys. He was coordinating the attack," Sellal said, adding that the raiders had threatened to blow up the gas installation.
So the prisoners are singing. That's a good thing.
That Canadian's name was given only as Chedad. Algerian officials have also named other cut-throats in recent days as having leadership roles among the attackers. Veteran Islamist bandido Mokhtar Belmokhtar grabbed credit on behalf of al Qaeda.
He grabbed credit for a trainwreck.
In Ottawa, Canada's foreign affairs department said it was seeking information, but referred to the possible involvement of only one Canadian.
Always assuming you could call someone Canadian whose primary language is Arabic and whose culture is Arabian.
The jihadists had planned the attack two months ago in neighboring Mali, Sellal added. During the siege, from which he said they had hoped to take foreign hostages to Mali, the kidnappers had demanded La Belle France end its military operation.
And La Belle France demanded the bad guyz cease taking hostages in all former districts of Metropolitan France.
Sellal said that initially the raiders in Algeria had tried to hijack a bus carrying foreign workers to a nearby airport and take them hostage. "They started firing at the bus and received a severe response from the soldiers guarding the bus," he said. "They failed to achieve their objective, which was to kidnap foreign workers from the bus."
That shoulda been their first clue that the light at the end of the tunnel was a train.
He said special forces and army units were deployed against the bully boys, who had planted explosives in the gas plant with a view to blowing up the facility. Normally producing 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas, it was shut down during the incident. The government now aims to reopen it this week.

One group of cut-throats had tried to escape in some vehicles, each of which also was carrying three or four foreign workers, some of whom had explosives attached to their bodies. After what he called a "fierce response from the armed forces", the raiders' vehicles crashed or went kaboom! and one of their leaders was among those killed.

LIBYAN NUMBER PLATES

Sellal said the jihadists who staged the attack last Wednesday had crossed into the country from neighboring Libya, after arriving there from Islamist-held northern Mali via Niger.
Niger is not the French version of Nigeria. It is geographically the largest country in West Africa, but most of it is useless desert. Its primary function is to produce yellowcake. Its population is mostly concentrated in the south and west of the country because the rest is uninhabitable.
An Algerian newspaper said they had arrived in cars painted in the colors of state energy company Sonatrach but registered in Libya, a country awash with arms since Western powers backed a revolt to bring down Muammar Qadaffy
...a proud Arab institution for 42 years, now among the dear departed, though not the dearest...
in 2011.
"Hmmm... Look at that, Mahmoud. Those cars are painted in Sonatrach colors but they have Libyan plates!"
"Probably nothing to it but lemme call the state security forces, just to make sure."

The raid has exposed the vulnerability of multinational-run oil and gas installations in an important producing region and pushed the growing threat from Islamist bully boy groups in the Sahara to a prominent position in the West's security agenda.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika
... 10th president of Algeria. He was elected in 1999 and is currently on his third or fourth term. Maybe it's his fifth. He expects to leave office feet-first...
has ordered an investigation into how security forces failed to prevent the attack, the daily El Khabar said.

Algerian Tahar Ben Cheneb - leader of a group called the Movement of Islamic Youth in the South who was killed on the first day of the assault - had been based in Libya where he married a local woman two months ago, it said.
My guess would be that he's the not-further-identified Canuck referenced above. "Movement of Islamic Youth" sounds like it should be the Ḥarakat ash-Shabāb, or just "al-Shabaab." Everybody wants to be youthful, by Goo.
ONE-EYED JIHADIST

Belmokhtar - a one-eyed jihadist who fought in Afghanistan and Algeria's civil war of the 1990s when the secular government fought Islamists - tied the desert attack to La Belle France's intervention across the Sahara against beturbanned fascisti in Mali.
I'm not too sure what the significance is of Mokhtar being squinky-eyed. It never seemed to bother Popeye.
"We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation," he said in a video, according to Sahara Media, a regional website. About 40 attackers participated in the raid, he said, roughly matching the government's figures for fighters killed and captured.
So there's 29 dead turbans, three in custody, which leaves approximately eight to be accounted for.
Belmokhtar demanded an end to French air strikes against Islamist fighters in neighboring Mali. These began five days before the fighters swooped before dawn and seized a plant that produces 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas exports.
That was followed by the Algerian military doing some "swooping" of its own.
U.S. and European officials doubt such a complex raid could have been organized quickly enough to have been conceived as a direct response to the French military intervention. However,
the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits...
the French action could have triggered an operation that had already been planned.
They had lots of other things they wanted, like the Blind Sheikh and Aafia Siddiqui and ponies for everyone.
The group behind the raid, the Mulathameen Brigade, threatened to carry out more such attacks if Western powers did not end what it called an assault on Moslems in Mali, according to the SITE service, which monitors bully boy statements.
Carry out many more like this one and they'll be wiped out. Of course, they might find it harder to get volunteers for the next one.
In a statement published by the Mauritania-based Nouakchott News Agency, the hostage takers said they had offered talks about freeing the captives, but the Algerian authorities had been determined to use military force. Sellal blamed the raiders for the collapse of negotiations.

BLOODY SIEGE

The siege turned bloody on Thursday when the Algerian army opened fire, saying fighters were trying to escape with their prisoners. Survivors said Algerian forces blasted several trucks in a convoy carrying both hostages and their captors.

Nearly 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners escaped, mainly on Thursday when the fighters were driven from the residential barracks. Some captors remained holed up in the industrial complex until Saturday when they were overrun.

The bloodshed has strained Algeria's relations with its Western allies, some of which are a lot more squeamish have complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken.

Nevertheless, Britannia and La Belle France both defended the military action by Algeria, the strongest military power in the Sahara and an ally the West needs in combating the bully boys.

"This would have been a most demanding task for security forces anywhere in the world and we should acknowledge the resolve shown by the Algerians in undertaking it," British Prime Minister David Cameron
... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ...
told parliament on Monday.
Once they had the hostages across the border in Mali they could have ridden that camel for years and years. There would have been hostages dropping dead from old age, assuming there were any left when they got done chopping heads off to goad the Western govts into coughing up millions o'bucks in ransom.
The raid on the plant, which was home to expatriate workers from Britannia's BP, Norway's Statoil, Japanese engineering firm BGC Corp and others, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara.
What isn't "vulnerable" in Beau Geste country?
However,
the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits...
Algeria is determined to press on with its energy industry.
What're they supposed to do? Go back to Barbary piracy?
Oil Minister Youcef Yousfi visited the site and said physical damage was minor, state news service APSE reported. The plant would start up again in two days, he said.

Algeria, scarred by the civil war with Islamist faceless myrmidons in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, insisted from the start of the crisis there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism. La Belle France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to crush beturbanned fascisti in northern Mali.
Modern day terrorism and antiterrorism were pretty much invented in Algeria. Ask any Harki.
In a reference to Western concerns that the Sahara and the dry grasslands of the Sahel to its south may become a haven for its Islamist enemies as Afghanistan was under the Taliban before 2001, Sellal said Algeria would not become "Sahelistan".

Cameron said Islamist threats to Britannia from Afghanistan and Pakistain had diminished, compared with four years ago: "But at the same time," he said, "Al Qaeda franchises have grown in Yemen, Somalia and parts of North Africa."
Posted by: Fred 2013-01-22
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=360600