What's new

Mali affair: Dozens of Westerners taken as hostages in Algeria

Sir we had hostage situations several times in most we don't loose single hostage if you want to make blunders and loose hostages than go ahead and don't do nothing but if you want we can help you So please have some sense we love our Muslim brothers that is why we offer help
Give me a freaking break, your last hostage situation were the taliban took over a military pakistani base was finished with a blood bath.
Here the fact, they were over 800 hundred hostages, some of them were doned afghan garnment, others explosive necklesses, to make it hard for our SF to act, on top of that the whole gas plant was rigged with explosives. It is was extremely difficult situation that our forces had to deal with. Despite all that, they managed to save all the hostages whether domestic or foreign, with a saddly small loss of the captives[ number not known at this time, but in the twenties], saved the gas plant with no losses among them! That is my friend what we call high degree of capability that make them one of the best in the of SF.


Pakistan may need to sent his to learn from us in the spirit of moslem solidarity...:cheers:
 
. . .
As of this time the count is...

Hostages rescued: 685 Algerian, 107 other nationalities
23 Hostages dead
32 Terrorists dead

If this count holds then I'd say Algeria's military did a respectable job considering the circumstances. It would have been virtually impossible to end the situation without hostage casualties given what I've heard.

RIP to the dead hostages, condolences to their families, and screw the scumbag terrorists.
 
.
That is the final results, although we may have to wait until the the number of dead hostages is given by nationality. The Algerian forces did absolutely a great job in very difficult situation.
But here the final count and the weaponery captured on the assailants. {pls translate to english}

Cette intervention s’est soldée par la libération de 685 travailleurs algériens et 107 étrangers, trente-deux (32) terroristes éliminés et le décès de vingt trois (23) victimes », a précisé un communiqué du ministère de l’Intérieur cité par l'agence APS.

L’armement récupéré est composé de « six (6) fusils-mitrailleurs (FMPK), 21 fusils PMAK, deux fusils à lunettes, 2 mortiers 60mm avec roquettes, 6 missiles de type C5 60mm avec rampes de lancement, 2 RPG7 avec 8 roquettes, 10 grenades disposées en ceintures explosives », a indiqué la même source.

L’opération a permis la récupération de « tenues militaires étrangères et d’un stock de munitions et d’explosifs ».
 
.
The eyes are turning to Lybia from where the convoy of djihadist come from...
a reply of the Algerian youth to the attack...




قـــــــــــــــــــــــــولو لفرانســــــــــــــــــــــــ*ـــــــــــا
.حنا مـــــــــــــــــاشي توانســـــــــــــــــــــــــ*ــــا
.معـــــــــــــــــــــندناش جـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ*ردان
.من بــــــــــــــــــــكري راصـــــــــــــــــــــــــــ*ــــــا
.و لي خـــــــــــــــــــــــلط فينا بــــــــــــــــــاصا
****** النـــــــــــــاتو و الماريكــــــــــــــــــــان.*..
.غالـــــــــــــــــــــــــط*ين في حســـــــــــــــــابهم .
...لينـــــــــــــــــــا واش جابهــــــــــــــــــــــــــ*ـم ...
..لقاعــــــــــــــدة في عين امينــــــــااس
..و الله ماحــــــــــــــلبهــــــــــ*ــــــــــــــ ـــــ ـــــم ....
.او L'ALGERIE JAMAIS تتقــــــــــــــــــــــــــا*س

http://www.youtube.com/v/95uxU2LXtXs
 
.
The Hero of In Amenas, defied the terroristes and sounded the alarm. He was the first victim.

333333_200_150.jpg
 
.
Algerians aided hostage’s escape


Algerian captives wrapped a turban around a Japanese colleague to smuggle him out of the besieged gas plant, company officials said on Friday, as they recounted heroic tales amidst the horror of the deadly attack.

The seven Japanese survivors of the desert hostage crisis owe their lives to “patience, judgement, bravery and luck”, said Koichi Kawana, the president of their engineering firm employer JGC.

“One of them made it out because he stayed glued to the spot under a truck” as bullets flew in a fierce firefight, Kawana told reporters at the company's headquarters in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo.

During an hour-long news conference, Kawana stressed the debt of gratitude owed to the firm's Algerian employees, who had put their own safety at risk to help their Japanese colleagues.
Heavily-armed Islamists overran the gas complex at In Amenas last Wednesday, sparking a four-day siege that ended in a bloody showdown with Algerian commandos.

At least 37 foreigners and one Algerian are known to have died, with witnesses saying the gunmen let Algerians and other fellow Muslims go.

One survivor told a company spokesman he had spent a restless January 16, cowering in his room at the residential camp after hearing the eruption of gunfire outside.

It was not until the following day and a gentle knock on the door from a familiar face that he saw any chance of getting out of the camp alive.

“Algerian staff wrapped my head with a turban and told me to cover my face with leg warmers,” the man told the spokesman.

“Then they huddled around me and smuggled me out of the camp” as if he was a fellow Algerian.
Dozens of foreigners were killed during the four-day standoff that ended in a bloody showdown with Algerian commandos on Saturday last week, with reports of summary executions.

Tokyo confirmed on Thursday that of the 17 Japanese men at the plant when the siege began, 10 had died.

Japan's total - its worst terror toll since the September 11 attacks on New York - was the highest of any single nation and a rare taste of the jihadist violence for a country that has stayed away from Washington's wars in Muslim lands.

Company president Kawana, who flew to Algeria to co-ordinate the firm's response said he had been stunned to see the charred remains of vehicles and other wrecks that littered the plant.

Video footage broadcast in Japan and apparently taken in the immediate aftermath of the commandos' raid shows the bodies covered by hastily arranged blankets or, in one case, a mattress.

A pair of abandoned shoes lie close to one of the corpses from which blood leeches onto the red Saharan sand.

Spatters at head height are clearly visible against a white wall, apparent evidence of an execution-style shooting.

Kawana said he cannot forget the rush of horror that flooded through him as he walked into the morgue to identify the bodies of the fallen.

“When I saw them, I prayed it was not them,” he said, pausing to gather his thoughts, tears visibly welling in his eyes. “But unfortunately it was.”

“I felt pain, pain and pain,” he said, biting his lip. “I was filled with sorrow.

“Some of my colleagues unleashed their sadness, crying out the names” of those who had died.

Kawana said the identification of the dead was only possible because the survivors volunteered for the grisly task.

“Although they themselves had a terrible experience, they worked hard to identify the bodies, hoping strongly they could bring them back to their families as quickly as possible,” Kawana said.

“They sorted things out one by one. They did a great job,” he said.

“I'm immensely proud of all of them.” - Sapa-AFP

http://www.iol.co.za...scape-1.1458781
 
.
Geoff D. Porter.Founder, North Africa Risk Consulting,

Why Algeria Did Not Distinguish Between Expatriates and Its Citizens at In Amenas

At a vibrant and bustling French restaurant high above the Bay of Algiers in 2005, a loud crash sent my Algerian friends diving for cover under the table. Diners at other tables all did the same, leaving me sitting upright and alone. When it became clear that a waiter had dropped a serving tray stacked with dishes, everyone reemerged laughing. My friends joked that I was too slow. Had it been the 1990s, it would have been a terrorist bomb and I would have been dead. Gallows humor to ease the trauma of Algeria's "Dark Decade" when it fought an Islamist insurgency. There has never been an official count, but estimates are that 150,000 to 200,000 people died during the ten year conflict, many of them in terrorist attacks targeting public places, just like the French restaurant where we were having dinner.

When I spoke with friends and colleagues in Algiers on January 16, 2012, as news of the terrorist attack at In Amenas began to radiate outward from the close community of expatriates working in the hydrocarbons sector to everyday Algerians, the conversations seemed if not scripted at least oft repeated: In Amenas was tragic; the loss of life would be horrible. And no one expected it to end any differently than it ultimately did. Their's was a response that had been learned and rehearsed during the Islamist insurgency. If it seemed somehow reflexive, like ducking under dinner tables, it was no less sympathetic.

The insurgency was gruesome. People killed by electric drills and power sanders. Entire villages slaughtered in the night. Corpses were displayed during the morning rush hour on the shoulder of the highway leading into downtown Algiers. Families would be notified and come to collect their dead. They would hold funeral rites and bury the victims, only to find the bodies by the side of the road again the next day, having been disinterred by insurgents. Anybody was a target -- doctors, poets, professors, lawyers, journalists, politicians, elementary school teachers. This was not the al Qaeda-style, episodic, spectacular terrorism of recent years. This was the excruciating grind of workaday terrorism.

The insurgency's violence had engendered an equally violent and uncompromising counterterrorism policy. And the more brutal the insurgency became, the more unrelenting the government's response. The government's response to the terrorism in the 1990s set the precedent for the policy that was implemented at In Amenas. Even in the early hours of the In Amenas crisis Algerians knew how it was likely to end. Algerian security forces would kill the terrorists. Hostages would die as well. This would be a genuine tragedy, but the unarticulated sentiment was that any deaths among the hostages were the cost of reestablishing law and order and reinforcing the state's monopoly on force. Hostages might die for the sake of the greater goal of preventing Algeria from slipping back into the Dark Decade.

Hostages did die, at least 37 expatriate workers and one Algerian. What surprised many outside observers was that Algeria did not distinguish between Algerians and expatriates. To understand why, it is important to understand the emergence of modern Algeria.

Algeria is a socialist country. When Algeria finally won independence from France in 1962 after an eight year war, the founders of the new state did not revive an indigenous form of government that had been displaced by more than a century of French colonial occupation. Instead they created a socialist republic modeled on France, but without the French. Echoing the Fifth Republic's liberté, égalité, fraternité, Algerians were free, they were equal, and they were brotherly. Despite the state's shortcomings over the last 50 years which are readily apparent to Algerians of all walks, this sense of equality is deeply engrained. No one Algerian was above another. As visitors to Algiers and other Algerian cities are quick to note, there are no shoeshine boys in Algeria -- no Algerian is expected to kneel at the feet of another. By extension, certainly no foreigner was above any Algerian.

While foreigners are welcome in Algeria, they are made to understand that they are not only subject to the government's laws and its rules and regulations, but also to the state's broader objectives. Just as Algerians are part of what the government calls the "national project," expatriates too are expected to contribute to furthering the state's goals and to the betterment of the country. Foreigners are not in Algeria simply to exploit what Algeria has to offer and then return to their home countries. When foreign companies install themselves in Algeria, it is understood that they have committed themselves to Algeria's "national project." Part of this commitment is enshrined in regulations governing foreign firms, but another portion is informal - expatriate workers are not accorded any special status and are treated no differently in their day-to-day doings and interactions with the Algerian bureaucracy than Algerian citizens. Usually, this is just a challenge of living and working in Algeria, a source of headaches and hassles, but nothing more.

At In Amenas, this tragically meant giving their lives alongside their Algerian colleagues. For the Algerian government, the military operation's goals were threefold, a quick end to the crisis, rescue of as many hostages as possible, and most importantly, restoration of the state's monopoly on force and reestablishing its capacity for deterrence. The government did bring the crisis to an abrupt end and it did manage to rescue some hostages. It is still unclear whether the military's raid will deter further attacks, but for the sake of the Algerian and expatriate victims, let's hope that it did, especially because while it may be some time before expatriates return to Algeria, Algerians do not have the same option and are compelled to see the national project through.
http://www.huffingto..._b_2537178.html
 
.

Country Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom