Hiding, Praying, Tied to Bombs: Captives Detail Algerian Ordeal
Top left, Canal Algerie, via Associated Press; bottom right, Canal Algerie, via Reuters
Rescued hostages in In Amenas,
Algeria, in images taken from television on Friday. Militants were
still possibly holding dozens of gas-field workers captive, officials
said.
Published: January 18, 2013
The gunmen, dressed in fatigues and wearing turbans, stormed in well
before dawn aboard pickup trucks, announcing their arrival with a burst
of gunfire.
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McFaul Family, via Reuters
Stephen McFaul, a hostage who escaped, in an earlier photo with his sons.
Dozens of employees were eating breakfast at the time before heading off
to the vast network of tubes and silos of the In Amenas gas field,
where hundreds of Algerians and foreigners work to extract natural gas
from the arid sands of the Sahara.
“God is great,” the gunmen cried as they arrived.
It was the beginning of a terrifying ordeal — one in which foreign
hostages would come under fire from both the gunmen holding them and the
Algerian government soldiers trying to free them. For many of the
captives, it is an ordeal that has yet to end.
Some hostages were forced to wear explosives on their bodies. Others hid
under beds and on rooftops, praying to survive but expecting death. One
was shot in the back while his fellow captives looked on. Left by their
captors with their cellphones, some phoned home with terrifying
accounts of the horrors unfolding all around.
These were among the chilling tales recounted Friday by some of the
hundreds of workers who managed to escape the national gas field on the
eastern edge of
Algeria that had been stormed by Islamist militants two days before.
The gunmen, fighters with a group called Al Mulathameen, said they were
acting to avenge the French intervention in nearby Mali, Algerian
officials said. But there were indications that the attack had been
planned long before the French military began its offensive to recapture
the northern half of that country from Islamist insurgents.
The attackers appeared to know the site well, even the fact that
disgruntled Algerian catering workers were planning a strike.
“We know you’re oppressed; we’ve come here so that you can have your
rights,” the militants told Algerians at the facility, according to one
Algerian former hostage. Another hostage said the fighters had asked
about the plans for a strike.
“The terrorists were covered with explosives, and they had detonators,”
said a senior Algerian government official who was briefed on the
crisis. He said the situation remained a standoff on Friday, with “a few
terrorists holding a few hostages.”
Former captives said that several of the fighters appeared to be
foreign, with non-Algerian accents. One Algerian worker said that some
of them may have been Libyan and Syrian, and that one might have been
French. Another gunman who spoke impeccable English was assigned to
speak to the many foreigners.
When the Algerian military eventually intervened, the situation grew
even more chaotic. According to one witness, Algerian helicopters
attacked several jeeps that were carrying hostages. The fate of at least
some of those hostages remains unknown. The Algerian state news agency
reported that 12 Algerian and foreign workers had been killed since the
start of the military operation and that dozens remained unaccounted
for.
From the start, it was clear that the gunmen only wished to harm
foreigners. Algerian workers, along with other Muslims who could prove
their faith by reciting from the Koran, were herded into one area,
workers said.
“They told us, ‘We are your brothers. You have telephones: call your
families to reassure them,’ ” said Moussa, an Algerian worker who asked
to be identified only by his first name.
Algerian women in the group of hostages were released right away on
Wednesday morning, Moussa said, but the militants initially declined to
release the Algerian men, saying it was for their own good. “We’re
afraid that if we free you, the army will shoot at you,” he quoted them
as saying.
Foreigners, meanwhile, were taken away, their hands bound with rubber,
both Algerian witnesses said. Some of the employees resisted. Several
Filipino workers who had refused to leave their rooms were beaten,
Moussa said. At one point, the fighters shot a European as he tried to
flee, he said. The other Algerian described seeing a middle-aged
European man, perhaps a security official, shot in the back in the
cafeteria, where the lights had been switched off. He believed the man
had died.
Adam Nossiter contributed reporting from Bamako, Mali; Douglas Dalby from Dublin; and Manny Fernandez from Houston.
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