Insiders aided plan for Algeria gas-plant raid, officials report

Algerian firemen carry a coffin Monday into the morgue in Ain Amenas, Algeria. The coffin contains the body of a person killed during the hostage situation in a gas plant.
Algerian firemen carry a coffin Monday into the morgue in Ain Amenas, Algeria. The coffin contains the body of a person killed during the hostage situation in a gas plant.

— The hostage-taking at a remote Algerian gas plant was carried out by 30 militants from across the northern swath of Africa and two from Canada, authorities said.

The militants, who wore military uniforms and knew the plant’s layout, included explosives experts who rigged it with bombs and a leader whose final order was to kill all the captives.

The operation also had help with inside knowledge - a former driver at the plant, Algeria’s prime minister said Monday.

In all, 38 workers and 29 militants died, the Algerian prime minister said Monday, offering the government’s first detailed account of four days of chaos that ended with a bloody military raid that he defended as the only way possible to end the standoff. Five foreigners are still missing.

“You may have heard the last words of the terrorist chief,” Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal told reporters. “He gave the order for all the foreigners to be killed, so there was a mass execution. Many hostages were killed by a bullet to the head.”

Monday’s government narrative ran from the moment of the attempted bus hijacking on Wednesday to the moment the attackers prepared to detonate bombs across the sprawling complex on Saturday. That’s when Algerian special forces moved in for the second and final time.

All but one of the dead victims - an Algerian security guard - were foreigners. The dead hostages included seven Japanese workers, six Filipinos, three energy workers each from the U.S. and Britain, two from Romania and one worker from France.

The prime minister said three attackers were captured but did not specify their nationalities or their conditions or say where they were being held.

He said the Islamists included a former driver at the complex from Niger and that the militants “knew the facility’s layout by heart.” The vast complex is deep in the Sahara, 800 miles south of Algiers, with a network of roads and walkways for the hundreds of workers who keep it running.

The attackers wore military uniforms, according to state television, bolstering similar accounts by former hostages that the attackers didn’t just shoot their way in.

“Our attention was drawn by a car. It was at the gate heading toward the production facility. Four attackers stepped out of a car that had flashing lights on top of it,” one of the former hostages, said Liviu Floria, a 45-yearold mechanic from Romania.

The militants had said during the standoff that their band included people from Canada, and hostages who had escaped recalled hearing at least one of the militants speaking English with a North American accent.

The Algerian premier saidthe Canadians were of Arab descent. He further said the militant cell also included men from Egypt, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Tunisia, as well as three Algerians. Officials in Canada could not confirm that any of the attackers were from there.

Three Americans died in the attack and seven made it out safely, a U.S. official in Washington said, and the bodies have been recovered.

Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokesman, identified the dead as Victor Lynn Lovelady and Gordon Lee Rowan, without specifying their hometowns. On Friday, the State Department said Frederick Buttacio of Katy, Texas, had died.

A Colorado man survived the hostage crisis by hiding from the terrorists for 2 1/2 days before escaping to a nearby Algerian military base.

Steven Wysocki of Ebert, Colo., worked as a production supervisor at the natural gas field. His wife, Kristi, told ABC World News on Monday that, at times, the terrorists were only a few feet from where her husband was hiding. She said she felt that her husband “made it to hell and back.”

An earlier report from an Algerian security official that as many as 80 people had died in the assault - including hostages and attackers - appears to have overstated the toll, but the official had cautioned that many bodies discovered during a sweep of the facility were badly disfigured, making it difficult to reach a total.

The attack began early Wednesday with the attempted hijacking of two buses filled with workers outside the complex. Repelled by Algerian forces, the militants moved on the main complex, armed with missiles, mortars and bombs for their three explosives experts, said Prime Minister Sellal. They split into two groups, with one infiltrating the complex’s living quarters and the other the gas plant.

Sellal praised the quick wits of a guard who tripped an alarm that stopped the flow of gas and warned workers of an imminent attack.

“It was thanks to him that the factory was protected,” he said.

Floria, the former hostage from Romania, remembered the moment the power was cut.

“I ran together with other expats and hid under the desks in my office, locking the door. Attackers went scanning the office facility kicking the doors in. Luckily our door did not break, and they went on to other offices,” he said. “Locals were freed, the attackers made clear from the beginning that only foreigners were a target. Expats were detained.”

Ultimately, Floria escaped. But not before he heard the two gunshots that silenced a pair of wounded hostages he said he tried to save.

The prime minister said the heavily armed militants had prepared for the attack for two months. He said the attackers arrived from northern Mali and had planned to return there with the foreign hostages. Seven French citizens taken hostage in recent years are thought to be held by al-Qaida linked groups in northern Mali.

The prime minister added that the attackers had ultimately crossed into Algeria through its eastern border with Libya, which is much closer to the refining site. If true, it highlights the enormous distances that complicate the policing of national boundaries in the vast Sahara.

“We would need two NATOs to monitor our borders,” Sellal said.

Sellal justified the Thursday helicopter attack on vehicles filled with hostages out of the military’s fear the kidnappers were attempting to escape.

In a statement, the Masked Brigade, the group that claimed to have masterminded the takeover, has warned of more such attacks against any country backing military intervention in neighboring Mali, where the French are trying to stop an advance by Islamic extremists. Algeria, despite its government’s reservations about the French decision, is allowing French jets to overfly.

Algerian officials have said that the militants demanded an end to France’s armed intervention in Mali, and the prime minister said they sought the release of prisoners in Algeria. The Algerian government said from the outset that it would not negotiate.

“They went wild with their demands,” the prime minister said. “It was impossible to meet, and it caused the military to intervene.”

Col. Thierry Burkhard, the French military spokesman, said he did not know whether militants in Mali were aware of the events in Algeria.

“However, I’m convinced the terrorist groups in the field have radios, so there’s a strong chance that they’re not only up to date with what’s happening in Algeria but they’re listening to everything that Western journalists are saying about the deployment of different forces in the field,” he said.

The attack will do little to discourage the drive for lucrative energy exploration in northern Africa, experts say, but it is forcing companies to increase security after largely ignoring the risks of operating in the remote desert region.

Spanish, Norwegian and British oil companies quickly evacuated workers from Algerian energy facilities in the wake of the hostage-taking. Energy companies are loath to discuss the issue, but experts say the financial bounty is too high to scare away firms like gas giant BP and Norway’s Statoil for long.

“The risks are never going to be so much that they outweigh the rewards from working in these environments,” Alison Lyall, a security analyst at Harnser Risk Group in Norwich, England, said Monday.

Information for this article was contributed by Aomar Ouali, Karim Kebir, Paul Schemm, Lori Hinnant, Sarah DiLorenzo, Bradley Klapper, Rob Gillies, Nicolae Dumitrache, Robert Barr, Gregory Katz, Jill Lawless, Cassandra Vinograd, Greg Keller and Vadim Ghirda of The Associated Press; and by Adam Nossiter, Alan Cowell, Steven Erlanger, Scott Sayare, Stanley Reed, Floyd Whaley, Martin Fackler, Eric Schmitt, Michael R. Gordon, Ian Austen, Michael Schwirtz and Rick Gladstone of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/22/2013

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