Pinoys among hostages being held at Algeria gas field — report
Filipino and Malaysian nationals are among the hostages being held at a gas field in Algeria, French news channel France 24 reported on Wednesday based on what they said was a phone conversation with a Frenchman, who was also being held.
The station, which only broadcast a very short excerpt of the conversation they recorded with the French hostage, said he had told them that he was being held along with English, Japanese, Filipino, and Malaysian nationals.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) could not yet confirm if there were indeed Filipinos among the hostages.
“We are still verifying this report with our embassy in Tripoli which has jurisdiction over Algeria,” DFA Spokesman Raul Hernandez told GMA News Online in a text message.
On the other hand, the US has confirmed that there are Americans held hostage but they refused to give further details, according to a Reuters report.
Under constraint?
Meanwhile, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) could not yet confirm if there were indeed Filipinos among the hostages.
“We are still verifying this report with our embassy in Tripoli which has jurisdiction over Algeria,” DFA Spokesman Raul Hernandez told GMA News Online in a text message.
On the other hand, the US has confirmed that there are Americans held hostage but they refused to give further details, according to a Reuters report.
Under constraint?
News 24 said it had no way of knowing if the hostage was speaking under constraint from his captors.
According to the station, the Frenchman said the hostages were being held in a booby-trapped building at the gas field in southern Algeria and that individual hostages had belts of explosives attached to them as a deterrent against any attack from security forces.
France has not confirmed that one of its nationals is among the hostages.
Islamists told Mauritanian media that they were holding 41 Westerners, among them French, British and Japanese citizens, as well as seven Americans, at the gas field, In Amenas, which is jointly operated by British oil giant BP, Norway's Statoil and state-run Algerian energy firm Sonatrach.
On its website, BP confirmed there had been a "security incident" at the In Amenas field in a news release although their information is limited.
The company does not have confirmed information about the people occupying the site but said it was monitoring leads about injured personnel.
Statoil, on the other hand, revealed that they have less than 20 employees in the site and more than 10 are Norwegian. The company, in a news release, said it is giving priority to ensuring the safety of of the employees and the facilities.
On its website, BP confirmed there had been a "security incident" at the In Amenas field in a news release although their information is limited.
The company does not have confirmed information about the people occupying the site but said it was monitoring leads about injured personnel.
Statoil, on the other hand, revealed that they have less than 20 employees in the site and more than 10 are Norwegian. The company, in a news release, said it is giving priority to ensuring the safety of of the employees and the facilities.
Various sources had earlier indicated that the hostages include Americans, Britons, one Frenchman, an Irishman, several Japanese and Norwegians.
Algeria has said an Algerian and a Briton were killed in the attack.
Algeria has said an Algerian and a Briton were killed in the attack.
An Islamist group, in a statement posted on Mauritanian website Alakhbar, said the kidnapping was in retaliation for the French military intervention against armed Islamists who seized control of northern Mali in April last year.
Home and workplace
According to Reuters, the gas installation where dozens of foreign gas industry workers were being held hostage on Wednesday is their home as well as their workplace.
Algerian state oil company Sonatrach's base in Tigantourine, the site of the kidnapping according to the Algerian interior ministry, lies about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of the town of In Amenas, a settlement of about 5,000 people near the Libyan border surrounded by oil and gas production facilities.
The rectangular-shaped Tigantourine installation (sometimes spelled Tiguentourine) looks a lonely place on a Google satellite map.
The capital Algiers is 1,300 km to the north. Further west and south lies little but desert for hundreds of kilometers as far as the borders with Mali and Niger, countries which have seen kidnappings by al Qaeda-linked Islamists and criminal gangs since 2007.
"Once you are there on site you don't go wandering about," said an oil industry source.
The In Amenas gas project is run by Sonatrach, the British oil company BP, and Statoil of Norway. BP first worked in Algeria in the 1950s and returned in the late 1990s at the end of a long period of bloodshed and upheaval. The British company considers itself the largest foreign investor in Algeria.
According to BP's website, the In Amenas venture, one of the largest "wet gas" projects in Algeria, consists of a permanent accommodation camp and utility buildings where workers are engaged in adding extra compression to maintain gas output levels.
The project is in the process of adding a new "slugcatcher"—a system that separates liquids from gas to prevent overload of a connected gas pipeline.
In Amenas produces 9 billion cubic meters of gas a year (160,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day), more than a tenth of the country's overall gas output, and 60,000 barrels a day of condensate—a liquid often found with gas.
Demand and motive
Meanwhile, AFP said Algerian units surrounded the Islamist hostage takers, who were demanding the immediate release of 100 Islamists held captive in Algeria for the lives of their Western hostages based on an unidentified worker's tip to AFP.
"The assailants have demanded that these Islamists be taken to northern Mali," he told AFP in a phone conversation.
The group told Mauritian media earlier that the hostage taking was payback for France's assault on Islamists in Mali made possible through Algeria's cooperation.
“Algeria was chosen for this operation to teach (President Abdelaziz) Bouteflika that we will never accept the humiliation of the Algerian people's honor... by opening Algerian airspace to French planes,” it said.
On January 11 France attacked the Islamists in Mali in order to prevent them to get to its capital, Bamako.
French Rafale fighter jets were given permission by Algiers to occupy their airspace and conduct airstrikes against the Islamists, Paris said on Sunday.
— with reports from Agence France-Presse/Reuters/Andrei Medina, VVP
Home and workplace
According to Reuters, the gas installation where dozens of foreign gas industry workers were being held hostage on Wednesday is their home as well as their workplace.
Algerian state oil company Sonatrach's base in Tigantourine, the site of the kidnapping according to the Algerian interior ministry, lies about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of the town of In Amenas, a settlement of about 5,000 people near the Libyan border surrounded by oil and gas production facilities.
The rectangular-shaped Tigantourine installation (sometimes spelled Tiguentourine) looks a lonely place on a Google satellite map.
The capital Algiers is 1,300 km to the north. Further west and south lies little but desert for hundreds of kilometers as far as the borders with Mali and Niger, countries which have seen kidnappings by al Qaeda-linked Islamists and criminal gangs since 2007.
"Once you are there on site you don't go wandering about," said an oil industry source.
The In Amenas gas project is run by Sonatrach, the British oil company BP, and Statoil of Norway. BP first worked in Algeria in the 1950s and returned in the late 1990s at the end of a long period of bloodshed and upheaval. The British company considers itself the largest foreign investor in Algeria.
According to BP's website, the In Amenas venture, one of the largest "wet gas" projects in Algeria, consists of a permanent accommodation camp and utility buildings where workers are engaged in adding extra compression to maintain gas output levels.
The project is in the process of adding a new "slugcatcher"—a system that separates liquids from gas to prevent overload of a connected gas pipeline.
In Amenas produces 9 billion cubic meters of gas a year (160,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day), more than a tenth of the country's overall gas output, and 60,000 barrels a day of condensate—a liquid often found with gas.
Demand and motive
Meanwhile, AFP said Algerian units surrounded the Islamist hostage takers, who were demanding the immediate release of 100 Islamists held captive in Algeria for the lives of their Western hostages based on an unidentified worker's tip to AFP.
"The assailants have demanded that these Islamists be taken to northern Mali," he told AFP in a phone conversation.
The group told Mauritian media earlier that the hostage taking was payback for France's assault on Islamists in Mali made possible through Algeria's cooperation.
“Algeria was chosen for this operation to teach (President Abdelaziz) Bouteflika that we will never accept the humiliation of the Algerian people's honor... by opening Algerian airspace to French planes,” it said.
On January 11 France attacked the Islamists in Mali in order to prevent them to get to its capital, Bamako.
French Rafale fighter jets were given permission by Algiers to occupy their airspace and conduct airstrikes against the Islamists, Paris said on Sunday.
— with reports from Agence France-Presse/Reuters/Andrei Medina, VVP
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