TerrorismMany hostages dead in clumsy Algerian raid on gas drilling site

Sketchy news from the Sahara desert gas field site indicates that up to thirty hostages may have been killed by their Islamic captors as Algerian special forces attacked the site.

A Jihadist group seized the site and the workers there in response to Algeria allowing its air space to be used by France to attack Islamist fundamentalists who took over north Mali and who were threatening last Friday to extend their control over the whole country.

Reuters quotes Algerian officials who said that the thirty dead included eight Algerians, two Britons, two Japanese, and one French national. The nationality of the other seventeen hostages killed at the site had not been established.

The Guardian reports that earlier the militants said that thirty-four Western hostages had been killed in the Algerian rescue raid, and that eleven Islamists were also killed.

The Algerian military confirmed that eleven Islamists were killed, and that they included three Egyptians, two Algerians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Frenchman, and a Malian.

British prime minister David Cameron warned that the country “should be prepared for further bad news in this very dangerous, fluid situation”. The Foreign Office called it “an appalling tragedy”.

The Algerian news agency APS quoted military sources to say that the operation to free hostages had ended.

Mohamed Saïd, the Algerian communications minister, earlier confirmed that several hostages had been killed but said troops had no choice but to raid the site because of the “diehard” attitude of their captors. “The operation resulted in the neutralization of a large number of terrorists and the liberation of a considerable number of hostages,” Saïd said, according to the New York Times. “Unfortunately, we deplore also the death of some, as well as some who were wounded. We do not have final numbers.”

The Algerian say that 600 Algerian workers at the site had been freed and more than twenty foreigners had survived.

The Algerian government said that one reason for the raid was reliable information that the jihadist group, known as the Signers in Blood, had intended to take the hostages out of the country. Islamists in Mali, Niger, and Mauritania have been funding their operations by capturing Western hostages and then demanding hefty ransom for their release.

The British, French, and U.S. governments all said they were not informed of the raid in advance, and that they were contacted by the Algerian government only when the special forces were already attacking the site.

The Guardian notes that Western governments were less than impressed with the tactics used by the Algerians. Reports from the site talked of helicopter gunships strafing the workers’ living quarters where the hostages were being held.

Also, some of the militants tried to escape the assault by climbing into five jeeps, taking a few hostages with them. Before the jeeps could leave the compound, however, Algerian planes bombed four of them, killing both the jihadists and the hostages.

The British government appeared especially upset since only hours before the raid it was seeking to negotiate with the hostage takers, an effort joined by BP, a partner in the gas field. Because the British government hoped to reach a negotiated end to the hostage taking, and because it was led to believe by the Algerian government that no action would be taken without consultation with the United kingdom, Downing Street did not bother to conceal its irritation with Algeria.

“The prime minister explicitly told the Algerians he wanted advance warning of any military operation, but they just went for it,” a Downing Street source said. “The prime minister explained [in his 10-minute phone conversation with the Algerian prime minister] we would have preferred to be consulted in advance.”

The prime minister’s spokesman said that “the aim of the British government had been to work with the Algerian government and the company to resolve the situation peacefully”.