Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts

Egypt deploys troops in Suez after 9 killed on anniversary of uprising


CAIRO/ISMAILIA, Egypt (Reuters) - Egypt's armed forces deployed troops in the city of Suez early on Saturday after nine people were shot dead during nationwide protests against President Mohamed Mursi, underlining the country's deep divisions as it marked the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.


Eight of the dead, including a policeman, were shot dead in Suez, and another was shot and killed in the city of Ismailia, medics said. Another 456 people were injured across Egypt, officials said, in unrest on Friday fuelled by anger at Mursi and his Islamist allies over what the protesters see as their betrayal of the revolution.


Mursi said the state would not hesitate in "pursuing the criminals and delivering them to justice". In a statement, he also called on Egyptians to respect the principles of the revolution by expressing their views peacefully.


The troops were deployed in Suez after the head of the state security police in the city asked for reinforcements. The army distributed pamphlets to residents assuring them the deployment was temporary and meant to secure the city.


"We have asked the armed forces to send reinforcements on the ground until we pass this difficult period," Adel Refaat, head of state security in Suez, told state television.


Friday's anniversary laid bare the divide between the Islamists and their secular rivals.


The schism is hindering the efforts of Mursi, elected in June, to revive an economy in crisis and reverse a plunge in Egypt's currency by enticing back investors and tourists.


Inspired by the popular uprising in Tunisia, Egypt's revolution spurred further revolts across the Arab world. But the sense of common purpose that united Egyptians two years ago has given way to internal strife that already triggered bloody street battles last month.


Thousands of opponents of Mursi massed on Friday in Cairo's Tahrir Square - the cradle of the revolt against Mubarak - to rekindle the demands of a revolution they say has been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood, the group from which Mursi emerged.


In Suez, the military deployed armored vehicles to guard state buildings, witnesses and security sources said, as symbols of government were targeted across the country.


Street battles erupted in cities including Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Port Said. Arsonists attacked at least two state-owned buildings. An office used by the Muslim Brotherhood's political party was also torched.


"Our revolution is continuing. We reject the domination of any party over this state. We say no to the Brotherhood state," Hamdeen Sabahy, a popular leftist leader, told Reuters.


The Brotherhood decided against mobilizing for the anniversary, wary of the scope for more conflict after December's violence, stoked by Mursi's decision to fast-track an Islamist-tinged constitution rejected by his opponents.


The Brotherhood denies accusations that it is seeking to dominate Egypt, labeling them a smear campaign by its rivals.


'LEAVE! LEAVE! LEAVE!'


There were conflicting accounts of the lethal shooting in Suez. Some witnesses said security forces had opened fire in response to gunfire from masked men.


News of the deaths capped a day of violence that started in the early hours of Friday. Before dawn in Cairo, police battled protesters who threw petrol bombs and firecrackers as they approached a wall blocking access to government buildings near Tahrir Square.


Clouds of teargas filled the air. At one point, riot police used one of the incendiaries thrown at them to set ablaze at least two tents erected by youths, a Reuters witness said.


Skirmishes between stone-throwing youths and the police continued in streets around the square into the day. Ambulances ferried away a steady stream of casualties.


Protesters echoed the chants of 2011's historic 18-day uprising. "The people want to bring down the regime," they chanted. "Leave! Leave! Leave!" chanted others as they marched towards the square.


"We are not here to celebrate but to force those in power to submit to the will of the people. Egypt now must never be like Egypt during Mubarak's rule," said Mohamed Fahmy, an activist.


There were similar scenes in Suez and Alexandria, where protesters and riot police clashed near local government offices. Black smoke billowed from tires set ablaze by youths.


In Cairo, police fired teargas to disperse a few dozen protesters trying to remove barbed-wire barriers protecting the presidential palace, witnesses said. A few masked men got as far as the gates before they were beaten back.


Teargas was also fired at protesters who tried to remove metal barriers outside the state television building.


Outside Cairo, protesters broke into the offices of provincial governors in Ismailia and Kafr el-Sheikh in the Nile Delta. A local government building was torched in the Nile Delta city of al-Mahalla al-Kubra.


With an eye on parliamentary elections likely to begin in April, the Brotherhood marked the anniversary with a charity drive across the nation. It plans to deliver medical aid to one million people and distribute affordable basic foodstuffs.


Writing in Al-Ahram, Egypt's flagship state-run daily, Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie said the country was in need of "practical, serious competition" to reform the corrupt state left by the Mubarak era.


"The differences of opinion and vision that Egypt is passing through is a characteristic at the core of transitions from dictatorship to democracy, and clearly expresses the variety of Egyptian culture," he wrote.


Mursi's opponents say he and his group are seeking to dominate the post-Mubarak order. They accuse him of showing some of the autocratic impulses of the deposed leader by, for example, driving through the new constitution last month.


"I am taking part in today's marches to reject the warped constitution, the 'Brotherhoodisation' of the state, the attack on the rule of law, and the disregard of the president and his government for the demands for social justice," Amr Hamzawy, a prominent liberal politician, wrote on his Twitter feed.


The Brotherhood says its rivals are failing to respect the rules of the new democracy that put the Islamists in the driving seat via free elections.


(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Ahmed el-Shemi, Ashraf Fahim, Shaimaa Fayed and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Abdel Rahman Youssef in Alexandria; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Robert Woodward and Peter Cooney)



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North Korea to target U.S. with nuclear, rocket tests


SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its "sworn enemy".


The announcement by the country's top military body came a day after the U.N. Security Council agreed to a U.S.-backed resolution to censure and sanction North Korea for a rocket launch in December that breached U.N. rules.


North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea.


"We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States," North Korea's National Defence Commission said, according to state news agency KCNA.


North Korea is believed by South Korea and other observers to be "technically ready" for a third nuclear test, and the decision to go ahead rests with leader Kim Jong-un, who pressed ahead with the December rocket launch in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.


China, the one major diplomatic ally of the isolated and impoverished North, agreed to the U.S.-backed resolution and it also supported resolutions in 2006 and 2009 after Pyongyang's two earlier nuclear tests.


Thursday's statement by North Korea represents a huge challenge to Beijing as it undergoes a leadership transition, with Xi Jinping due to take office in March.


China's Foreign Ministry called for calm and restraint and a return to six-party talks, but effectively singled out North Korea, urging the "relevant party" not to take any steps that would raise tensions.


"We hope the relevant party can remain calm and act and speak in a cautious and prudent way and not take any steps which may further worsen the situation," ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular press briefing.


North Korea has rejected proposals to restart the talks aimed at reining in its nuclear capacity. The United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas are the six parties involved.


"After all these years and numerous rounds of six-party talks we can see that China's influence over North Korea is actually very limited. All China can do is try to persuade them not to carry out their threats," said Cai Jian, an expert on Korea at Fudan University in Shanghai.


Analysts said the North could test as early as February as South Korea prepares to install a new, untested president or that it could choose to stage a nuclear explosion to coincide with former ruler Kim Jong-il's Feb 16 birthday.


"North Korea will have felt betrayed by China for agreeing to the latest U.N. resolution and they might be targeting (China) as well (with this statement)," said Lee Seung-yeol, senior research fellow at Ewha Institute of Unification Studies in Seoul.


U.S. URGES NO TEST


Washington urged North Korea not to proceed with a third test just as the North's statement was published on Thursday.


"Whether North Korea tests or not is up to North Korea," Glyn Davies, the top U.S. envoy for North Korean diplomacy, said in the South Korean capital of Seoul.


"We hope they don't do it. We call on them not to do it," Davies said after a meeting with South Korean officials. "This is not a moment to increase tensions on the Korean peninsula."


The North was banned from developing missile and nuclear technology under sanctions dating from its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.


A South Korean military official said the concern now is that Pyongyang could undertake a third nuclear test using highly enriched uranium for the first time, opening a second path to a bomb.


North Korea's 2006 nuclear test using plutonium produced a puny yield equivalent to one kiloton of TNT - compared with 13-18 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb - and U.S. intelligence estimates put the 2009 test's yield at roughly two kilotons


North Korea is estimated to have enough fissile material for about a dozen plutonium warheads, although estimates vary, and intelligence reports suggest that it has been enriching uranium to supplement that stock and give it a second path to the bomb.


According to estimates from the Institute for Science and International Security from late 2012, North Korea could have enough weapons grade uranium for 21-32 nuclear weapons by 2016 if it used one centrifuge at its Yongbyon nuclear plant to enrich uranium to weapons grade.


North Korea has not yet mastered the technology needed to make a nuclear warhead small enough for an intercontinental missile, most observers say, and needs to develop the capacity to shield any warhead from re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.


North Korea gave no time-frame for the coming test and often employs harsh rhetoric in response to U.N. and U.S. actions that it sees as hostile.


The bellicose statement on Thursday appeared to dent any remaining hopes that Kim Jong-un, believed to be 30 years old, would pursue a different path from his father, Kim Jong-il, who oversaw the country's military and nuclear programs.


The older Kim died in December 2011.


"The UNSC (Security Council) resolution masterminded by the U.S. has brought its hostile policy towards the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) to its most dangerous stage," the commission was quoted as saying.


(Additional reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL, Ben Blanchard and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Ron Popeski)



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North Korea to target U.S. with nuclear, rocket tests


SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its "enemy".


The announcement by the country's top military body came a day after the United Nations Security Council agreed a U.S.-backed resolution to censure and sanction the country for a rocket launch in December that breached U.N. rules.


"We are not disguising the fact that the various satellites and long-range rockets that we will fire and the high-level nuclear test we will carry out are targeted at the United States," North Korea's National Defence Commission said, according to state news agency KCNA.


North Korea is believed by South Korea and other observers to be "technically ready" for a third nuclear test, and the decision to go ahead rests with leader Kim Jong-un who pressed ahead with the December rocket launch in defiance of the U.N. sanctions.


"Whether North Korea tests or not is up to North Korea," Glyn Davies, the top U.S. envoy for North Korean diplomacy, said in the South Korean capital of Seoul as KCNA released its statement.


"We hope they don't do it. We call on them not to do it," Davies said. "This is not a moment to increase tensions on the Korean peninsula."


The North was banned from developing missile and nuclear technology under sanctions dating from its 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.


The concern now is that Pyongyang, whose only major diplomatic ally, China, endorsed the latest U.N. resolution, could undertake a third nuclear test using highly enriched uranium for the first time, opening a second path to a bomb.


Its previous tests have been viewed as limited successes and used plutonium, of which the North has limited stocks.


North Korea gave no time-frame for the coming test and often employs harsh rhetoric in response to U.N. and U.S. actions.


Its long-range rockets are not seen as capable of reaching the United States mainland and it is not believed to have the technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a long-range missile.


"The UNSC (Security Council) resolution masterminded by the U.S. has brought its hostile policy towards the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) to its most dangerous stage," the commission was quoted as saying.


(Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)



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Netanyahu turns to Iran after narrow election win


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed victory in Israel's parliamentary election, shrugging off surprise losses to centre-left challengers and vowing on Wednesday to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.


However, Tuesday's vote, which also disappointed religiously inspired hardliners, may deflect the premier's focus on confronting Tehran and resisting Palestinian demands as Israel's secular, middle-class demanded new attention to domestic issues.


That, in turn, might draw Netanyahu toward a less fractious relationship with his key ally, U.S. President Barack Obama, who himself embarked on a new term this week with great ambitions.


Exit polls showed the Israeli leader's right-wing Likud and the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu would remain the biggest bloc in the 120-member assembly, but with only 31 seats, 11 fewer than the 42 the two parties held in the last parliament.


If the exit polls compiled by three local broadcasters prove correct - and they normally do in Israel - Netanyahu would be on course for a third term in office, perhaps leading a hardline coalition that would promote Jewish settlement on occupied land.


But his weakened showing in a vote which he had called nine months early in the hope of a strong mandate for his struggle with Iran, could complicate his efforts to forge an alliance with a stable and substantial majority in parliament.


"I am proud to be your prime minister, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity, for the third time, to lead the state of Israel," the 63-year-old leader told a cheering crowd in the early hours of Wednesday at his campaign headquarters.


Netanyahu said he planned to form as broad a governing coalition as possible, suggesting he would seek partners beyond his traditional ultra-nationalist and religious allies. His first call may be to Yair Lapid, a former television anchorman whose centrist, secular party came from nowhere to second place.


"The first challenge was and remains preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said.


Iran denies it is planning to build an atomic bomb, and says Israel, widely believed to have the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, is the biggest threat to the region.


Netanyahu views Tehran's nuclear program as a threat to Israel's existence and has stoked international concern by hinting at possible Israeli military action to thwart it.


He has shunted Palestinian peacemaking well down the agenda despite Western concern to keep the quest for a solution alive.


The projections showed right-wing parties with a combined strength of 61-62 seats against 58-59 for the centre-left.


Lapid's Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party should have 18 or 19 seats, exit polls showed - a stunning result for a newcomer to politics in a field of 32 contending parties.


Lapid won support amongst middle-class, secular voters by promising to resolve a growing housing shortage, abolish military draft exemptions for Jewish seminary students and seek an overhaul of the failing education system.


He urged Netanyahu "to build as broad a government as possible so that we can bring about real change in Israel".


The once dominant Labor party led by Shelly Yachimovich was projected to take third place with 17 seats. She described Likud victory claims as "ridiculous" before final results were in.


"There is a very good chance, a very good chance, that tomorrow morning Benjamin Netanyahu will not be able to form a government," she declared at her party headquarters.


Reconciling views to build a cabinet will certainly be hard.


"YESH ATID SWEEP"


Some in Netanyahu's party acknowledged that the election had gone somewhat awry. "We anticipated we would lose some votes to Lapid, but not to this extent. This was a Yesh Atid sweep," Likud campaign adviser Ronen Moshe told Reuters.


Lapid said before the election he would consider joining a Netanyahu-led government. If that happens, the ultra-Orthodox religious parties which often hold the balance of power in parliament might lose some of their leverage.


After a lackluster campaign, Israelis voted in droves on a sunny winter day, registering a turnout of 66.6 percent, the highest since 2003. That buoyed centre-left parties which had pinned their hopes on energizing an army of undecided voters against Netanyahu and his nationalist-religious allies.


"A big majority of middle class Israelis have voted strongly against the priorities of the last government," said Dan Avnon, a political science professor at Hebrew University.


"These are the people who pay the taxes and serve in the army," he said. "I don't think they can be ignored."


Opinion polls before the election had predicted an easy win for Netanyahu, although the last ones suggested he would lose some votes to the Jewish Home party, which opposes a Palestinian state and advocates annexing chunks of the occupied West Bank.


The exit polls projected 12 seats for Jewish Home.


The biggest casualty was the centrist Kadima party, which was projected to win no seats at all. It had gained the highest number in the previous election in 2009, although its then leader Tzipi Livni failed to put together a governing coalition.


Full election results are due by Wednesday morning and official ones will be announced on January 30. After that, President Shimon Peres is likely to ask Netanyahu, as leader of the biggest bloc in parliament, to try to form a government.


WESTERN ANXIETY


Whatever permutation finally emerges, a Netanyahu-led government is likely to resist any push for a peace deal with the Palestinians that would come anywhere near satisfying the moderates who seek a viable independent state alongside Israel.


Naftali Bennet, high-tech millionaire son of American immigrants who leads the hard-right, pro-settler Jewish Home party, was projected to win 12 seats - disappointing for him but still making his group a likely member of a coalition.


Bennet, who advocates annexing West Bank land to Israel, told cheering supporters: "There is only one truth and it is simple. The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel."


Britain warned Israel on Tuesday it was losing international support, saying Jewish settlement expansion had almost killed off prospects for a two-state solution.


U.S.-brokered peace talks broke down in 2010 amid mutual acrimony. Since then Israel has accelerated construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem - land the Palestinians want for their future state - much to the anger of Western partners.


Netanyahu's relations with Obama have been notably tense and Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the BBC the election was unlikely to change that.


"President Obama doesn't have high expectations that there's going to be a government in Israel committed to making peace and is capable of the kind of very difficult and painful concessions that would be needed to achieve a two-state solution," he said.


But Aaron David Miller, once a senior U.S. adviser on the peace process, said a weakening of the right might improve ties: "The fact is, if (Netanyahu) goes with Lapid and he reaches out to the centre, you're going to end up with an American-Israeli rapprochement to a certain degree," Miller told CNN.


Tuesday's vote was the first in Israel since Arab uprisings swept the region two years ago, reshaping the Middle East.


Netanyahu has said the turbulence, which has brought Islamist governments to power in several countries long ruled by secularist autocrats, including neighboring Egypt, shows the importance of strengthening national security.


Foreign policy issues barely registered during the election campaign, with a poll in Haaretz newspaper on Friday saying 47 percent of Israelis thought social and economic issues were the most pressing concern, against just 10 percent who cited Iran.


A major problem for the next government, which is unlikely to take power before mid-March, is the stuttering economy.


Data last week showed the budget deficit rose to 4.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, double the original estimate, meaning spending cuts and tax hikes look certain.


(Reporting by Jerusalem bureau; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)



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Algeria vows to fight Qaeda after 38 workers killed


ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria's prime minister accused a Canadian of coordinating last week's raid on a desert gas plant and, praising the storming of the complex where 38 mostly foreign hostages were killed, he pledged to resist the rise of Islamists in the Sahara.


Algeria will never succumb to terrorism or allow al Qaeda to establish "Sahelistan", an Afghan-style power base in arid northwest Africa, Abdelmalek Sellal told a news conference in Algiers where he also said at least 37 foreign hostages died.


"There is clear political will," the prime minister said.


Claimed by an Algerian al Qaeda leader as a riposte to France's attack on his allies in neighboring Mali the previous week, the four-day siege drew global attention to Islamists in the Sahara and Sahel regions and brought promises of support to African governments from Western powers whose toppling of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi helped flood the region with weapons.


The attack on a valuable part of its vital energy industry raised questions about the security capacity of an establishment that took power from French colonists 50 years ago, held off a bloody Islamist insurgency in the 1990s and has avoided the democratic upheavals the Arab Spring brought to North Africa.


Sellal said a Canadian citizen whom he named only as Chedad, a surname found among Arabs in the region, was among 29 gunmen killed and added that he had "coordinated" the attack. Another three militants were taken alive and were in custody.


Among hostages confirmed dead by their own governments were three Americans, seven Japanese, six Filipinos and three Britons; others from Britain, Norway and elsewhere were listed as unaccounted for. Sellal said seven of the 37 foreign dead were unidentified, while a further five foreigners were missing.


Nearly 700 Algerians and 100 other foreigners survived.


An Algerian security source said investigators pursuing the possibility that the attackers had inside help to map the complex and gain entry were questioning at least two employees.


Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament in London that Britain would increase its help to Algeria's intelligence and security forces and might do more for France in Mali, though he ruled out sending many of its stretched armed forces to Africa.


Noting a shift in the source of threats to British interests from Afghanistan to Africa, he also noted Sellal's rundown of a multinational group of gunmen from across north and west Africa and said the region was becoming "a magnet for jihadists".


Alongside a "strong security response", however, he called for efforts to address long-standing grievances, such as poverty and political exclusion, which foster support for violence. Some militants in Algeria want autonomy for the south and complain of domination by an unchanging establishment in Algiers.


DEATH AND SURVIVAL


As Algerian forces combed the Tigantourine plant near the town of In Amenas for explosives and the missing, survivors and the bereaved told tales of terror, narrow escapes and of death.


"The terrorists lined up four hostages and assassinated them ... shot them in the head," a brother of Kenneth Whiteside told Sky News, in an account of the Briton's death given to the family by an Algerian colleague who witnessed it. "Kenny just smiled the whole way through. He'd accepted his fate."


Filipino survivor Joseph Balmaceda said gunmen used him for cover: "Whenever government troops tried to use a helicopter to shoot at the enemy, we were used as human shields."


Another Briton, Garry Barlow, called his wife from within the site before he was killed and said: "I'm sat here at my desk with Semtex strapped to my chest."


Several hostages died on Thursday when Algerian helicopters blasted jeeps in which the militants were trying to move them.


An Algerian security source had earlier told Reuters that documents found on the bodies of two militants had identified them as Canadians: "A Canadian was among the militants. He was coordinating the attack," Sellal said.


In Ottawa, Canada's foreign affairs department said it was seeking information. Security experts noted that some Canadian citizens had been involved with international militants before.


Officials have also named other militants in recent days as having leadership roles among the attackers. Veteran Islamist Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda.


In a video distributed on the Internet, the one-eyed veteran of Afghan wars of the 1980s, of Algeria's civil war and of the lucrative trans-Sahara cigarette smuggling trade, said: "We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation."


Dressed in combat fatigues, Belmokhtar demanded an end to French attacks on Islamist fighters in Mali.


The jihadists had planned the attack two months ago in neighboring Mali, Sellal added. They had traveled from there through Niger and Libya, hence evading Algeria's strong security services, until close to In Amenas. Their aim, he said, had been to take foreign hostages to Mali, and they made a first attempt to take captives from a bus near the site early on Wednesday.


Normally producing 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas, the facility was shut down during the incident. The government said it aimed to reopen it this week, although officials at Britain's BP and Norway's Statoil, which operate the plant with Algeria's state energy firm, said the plans were not clear.


MALI CONFLICT


An Algerian newspaper said the jihadists had arrived in cars painted in the colors of Algerian state energy firm Sonatrach but registered in Libya, a country awash with weaponry since Western powers backed a revolt to oust Gaddafi in 2011.


Using his oil wealth, the Libyan dictator exercised a degree of influence in the region and the consequences of his death are still unfolding.


In a sign of the complexities wrought by the Arab Spring revolts, Egypt, a former military dictatorship now led by one of the generals' Islamist foes, criticized France's intervention in Mali on Monday. President Mohamed Mursi called instead for more spending to address rebels' grievances and warned that the military moves would "inflame the conflict in this region".


The bloodshed also increased the strains in Algeria's long fraught relations with Western powers, where some complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken.


But this week, Britain and France both defended the military action by Algeria, the strongest military power in the Sahara and an ally the West needs in combating the militants.


Chafik Mesbah, a former Algerian presidential security adviser, said: "The West did not criticize Algeria because it knows an assault was inevitable in the circumstances ... The victims were a minimum price to pay to solve the crisis."


(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Mark Heinrich)



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Algeria toll rises as attack claimed for al Qaeda


ALGIERS, Algeria (Reuters) - The death toll has risen to at least 48 hostages killed during a four-day siege at a gas plant deep in the Sahara as a veteran Islamist fighter claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda for the attack.


Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal is expected to give details at a Monday news conference about one of the worst international hostage crises in decades, which left American, British, French, Japanese, Norwegian and Romanian workers dead or missing.


A security source said on Sunday Algerian troops had found the bodies of 25 hostages, raising the number of militants and their captives killed to at least 80. He said six militants were captured alive and troops were still searching for others.


One-eyed veteran Islamist fighter Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed responsibility on Sunday for the attack on behalf of al Qaeda.


"We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation," he said in a video, according to Sahara Media, a regional website. He said about 40 attackers participated in the raid, roughly matching the government's figures for fighters killed and captured.


The fighters swooped out of the desert and seized the base on Wednesday, capturing a plant that produces 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas exports, as well as a nearby residential barracks.


They demanded an end to French air strikes against Islamist fighters in neighboring Mali that had begun five days earlier. However, U.S. and European officials doubt such a complex raid could have been organized quickly enough to have been conceived as a direct response to the French military intervention.


The siege turned bloody on Thursday when the Algerian army opened fire saying fighters were trying to escape with their prisoners. Survivors said Algerian forces blasted several trucks in a convoy carrying both hostages and their captors.


Nearly 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners escaped, mainly on Thursday when the fighters were driven from the residential barracks. Some captors remained holed up in the industrial complex until Saturday when they were overrun.


The bloodshed has strained Algeria's relations with its Western allies, some of whom have complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken. Nevertheless, Britain and France both defended the Algerian military action.


"It's easy to say that this or that should have been done. The Algerian authorities took a decision and the toll is very high but I am a bit bothered ... when the impression is given that the Algerians are open to question," said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. "They had to deal with terrorists."


British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a televised statement: "Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack.


"We should recognize all that the Algerians have done to work with us and to help and coordinate with us. I'd like to thank them for that. We should also recognize that the Algerians too have seen lives lost among their soldiers."


Algeria had given a preliminary death toll of 55 people killed - 23 hostages and 32 militants - on Saturday and said it would rise as more bodies were found.


The security source said that toll did not include the bodies of 25 hostages found on Sunday, which meant the total number of captives killed - foreign and local - was at least 48. The search was not over, and more could yet be found, he said.


Among foreigners confirmed dead by their home countries were three Britons, one American and two Romanians. The missing include at least 10 Japanese, five Norwegians, three other Britons, and a British resident. The security source said at least one Frenchman was also among the dead.


LAST WORDS?


Alan Wright, now safe at home in Scotland, said he had escaped with a group of Algerian and foreign workers after hiding for a day and a night. While hiding inside the compound, he managed to call his wife at home with their two daughters.


"She asked if I wanted to speak to Imogen and Esme, and I couldn't because I thought, I don't want my last ever words to be in a crackly satellite phone, telling a lie, saying you're OK when you're far from OK," he recalled to Sky News.


Despite the incident, Algeria is determined to press on with its energy industry. Oil Minister Youcef Yousfi visited the site and said physical damage was minor, state news service APS reported. The plant would start back up in two days, he said.


The Islamists' assault has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world and exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara.


Algeria, scarred by the civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, insisted from the start of the crisis there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism.


France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to crush Islamist rebels in northern Mali.


(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris and Daniel Flynn in Dakar; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Sophie Hares and Myra MacDonald)



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Algeria ends desert siege with 23 hostages dead


ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - Algerian troops ended a siege by Islamist militants at a gas plant in the Sahara desert where 23 hostages died, with a final assault which killed all the remaining hostage-takers.


Believed to be among the 32 dead militants was their leader, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, a Nigerien close to al Qaeda-linked commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, presumed mastermind of the raid.


An Algerian interior ministry statement on the death toll gave no breakdown of the number of foreigners among hostages killed since the plant was seized before dawn on Wednesday.


Details are only slowly emerging on what happened during the siege, which marked a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces are ratcheting up a war against Islamist militants in neighboring Mali.


Algeria's interior ministry said on Saturday that 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages had survived, but did not give a detailed breakdown of those who died.


"We feel a deep and growing unease ... we fear that over the next few days we will receive bad news," said Helge Lund, Chief Executive of Norway's Statoil, which ran the plant along with Britain's BP and Algeria's state oil company.


"People we have spoken to describe unbelievable, horrible experiences," he said.


British Prime Minister David Cameron said he feared for the lives of five British citizens unaccounted for at the gas plant near the town of In Amenas, which was also home to expatriate workers from Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.


One American and one British citizen have been confirmed dead. Statoil said five of its workers, all Norwegian nationals, were still missing. Japanese and American workers are also unaccounted for.


The Islamists' attack has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world, exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara and pushed Islamist radicalism in northern Africa to center stage.


Some Western governments expressed frustration at not being informed of the Algerian authorities' plans to storm the complex. Algeria, scarred by a civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, had insisted there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism.


President Barack Obama said on Saturday the United States was seeking from Algerian authorities a fuller understanding of what took place, but said "the blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out."


Official sources had no immediate confirmation of newspaper reports suggesting some of the hostages may have been executed by their captors as the Algerian army closed in for the final assault on Saturday.


One source close to the crisis said 16 foreign hostages were freed, including two Americans and one Portuguese.


BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said on Saturday four of its 18 workers at the site were missing. The remaining 14 were safe.


PLANNED BEFORE FRENCH LANDED IN MALI


The attack on the heavily fortified gas compound was one of the most audacious in recent years and almost certainly planned long before French troops launched a military operation in Mali this month to stem an advance by Islamist fighters.


Hundreds of hostages escaped on Thursday when the army launched a rescue operation, but many hostages were killed.


Before the interior ministry released its provisional death toll, an Algerian security source said eight Algerians and at least seven foreigners were among the victims, including two Japanese, two Britons and a French national. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.


The U.S. State Department said on Friday one American, Frederick Buttaccio, had died but gave no further details.


U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said nobody was going to attack the United States and get away with it.


"We have made a commitment that we're going to go after al Qaeda wherever they are and wherever they try to hide," he said during a visit to London. "We have done that obviously in Afghanistan, Pakistan, we've done it in Somalia, in Yemen and we will do it in North Africa as well."


Earlier on Saturday, Algerian special forces found 15 unidentified burned bodies at the plant, a source told Reuters.


Mauritanian news agencies identified the field commander of the group that attacked the plant as Nigeri, a fighter from one of the Arab tribes in Niger who had joined the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in early-2005.


That group eventually joined up with al Qaeda to become Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It and allied groups are the targets of the French military operation in Mali.


The news agencies described him as "one of the closest people" to Belmokhtar, who fought in Afghanistan and then in Algeria's civil war of the 1990s. Nigeri was known as a man for "difficult missions", having carried out attacks in Mauritania, Mali and Niger.


NO NEGOTIATION


Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed irritation that the Algerian army assault was ordered without consultation.


But French President Francois Hollande said the Algerian military's response seemed to have been the best option given that negotiation was not possible.


"When you have people taken hostage in such large number by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages - as they did - Algeria has an approach which to me, as I see it, is the most appropriate because there could be no negotiation," Hollande said.


The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the country's outwardly tough security measures.


Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.


Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.


The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in the civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.


(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Estelle Shirbon and David Alexander in London, Brian Love in Paris; Writing by Giles Elgood and Myra MacDonald)



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Foreigners still trapped in Sahara hostage crisis


ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria (Reuters) - More than 20 foreigners were captive or missing inside a desert gas plant on Saturday, nearly two days after the Algerian army launched an assault to free them that saw many hostages killed.


The standoff between the Algerian army and al Qaeda-linked gunmen - one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades - entered its fourth day, having thrust Saharan militancy to the top of the global agenda.


The number and fate of victims has yet to be confirmed, with the Algerian government keeping officials from Western countries far from the site where their countrymen were in peril.


Reports put the number of hostages killed at between 12 to 30, with possibly dozens of foreigners still unaccounted for - among them Norwegians, Japanese, Britons, Americans and others.


State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed on Friday the death of one American, Frederick Buttaccio, in the hostage situation, but gave no further details.


Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among the seven foreigners confirmed dead in the army's storming, the Algerian security source told Reuters. One British citizen was killed when the gunmen seized the hostages on Wednesday.


A U.S. official said on Friday that a U.S. Medevac flight carrying wounded of multiple nationalities had left Algeria.


By nightfall on Friday, the Algerian military was holding the vast residential barracks at the In Amenas gas processing plant, while gunmen were holed up in the industrial plant itself with an undisclosed number of hostages.


Scores of Westerners and hundreds of Algerian workers were inside the heavily fortified compound when it was seized before dawn on Wednesday by Islamist fighters who said they wanted a halt to a French military operation in neighboring Mali.


Hundreds escaped on Thursday when the army launched an operation, but many hostages were killed in the assault. Algerian forces destroyed four trucks holding hostages, according to the family of a Northern Irish engineer who escaped from a fifth truck and survived.


Leaders of Britain, Japan and other countries have expressed frustration that the assault was ordered without consultation and officials have grumbled at the lack of information. Many countries also withheld details about their missing citizens to avoid releasing information that might aid the captors.


An Algerian security source said 30 hostages, including at least seven Westerners, had been killed during Thursday's assault, along with at least 18 of their captors. Eight of the dead hostages were Algerian, with the nationalities of the rest of the dead still unclear, he said.


Algeria's state news agency APS put the total number of dead hostages at 12, including both foreigners and locals.


The base was home to foreign workers from Britain's BP, Norway's Statoil and Japanese engineering firm JGC Corp and others.


Norway says eight Norwegians are still missing. JGC said it was missing 10 staff. Britain and the United States have said they have citizens unaccounted for but have not said how many.


The Algerian security source said 100 foreigners had been freed but 32 were still unaccounted for.


"We must be prepared for bad news this weekend but we still have hope," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.


The attack has plunged international capitals into crisis mode and is a serious escalation of unrest in northwestern Africa, where French forces have been in Mali since last week fighting an Islamist takeover of Timbuktu and other towns.


"We are still dealing with a fluid and dangerous situation where a part of the terrorist threat has been eliminated in one part of the site, but there still remains a threat in another part," British Prime Minister David Cameron told his parliament.


"(The army) is still trying to achieve a ‘peaceful outcome' before neutralizing the terrorist group that is holed up in the (facility) and freeing a group of hostages that is still being held," Algeria's state news agency said on Friday, quoting a security source.


MULTINATIONAL INSURGENCY


Algerian commanders said they moved in on Thursday about 30 hours after the siege began, because the gunmen had demanded to be allowed to take their captives abroad.


A French hostage employed by a French catering company said he had hidden in his room for 40 hours under the bed before he was rescued by Algerian troops, relying on Algerian employees to smuggle him food with a password.


"I put boards up pretty much all round," Alexandre Berceaux told Europe 1 radio. "I didn't know how long I was going to stay there ... I was afraid. I could see myself already ending up in a pine box."


The captors said their attack was a response to the French military offensive in neighboring Mali. However, some U.S. and European officials say the elaborate raid probably required too much planning to have been organized from scratch in the single week since France first launched its strikes.


Paris says the incident proves its decision to fight Islamists in neighboring Mali was necessary.


Security in the half-dozen countries around the Sahara desert has long been a preoccupation of the West. Smugglers and militants have earned millions in ransom from kidnappings.


The most powerful Islamist groups operating in the Sahara were severely weakened by Algeria's secularist military in a civil war in the 1990s. But in the past two years the regional wing of Al Qaeda gained fighters and arms as a result of the civil war in Libya, when arsenals were looted from Muammar Gaddafi's army.


Al Qaeda-linked fighters, many with roots in Algeria and Libya, took control of northern Mali last year, prompting the French intervention in that poor African former colony.


The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions over the value of outwardly tough Algerian security measures.


Algerian officials said the attackers may have had inside help from among the hundreds of Algerians employed at the site.


U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said those responsible would be hunted down: "Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere. ... Those who would wantonly attack our country and our people will have no place to hide."


(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London, Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries in Dublin, Andrew Quinn and David Alexander in Washington; Writing by Philippa Fletcher and Peter Graff; Editing by Andrew Roche, Tom Pfeiffer and Jackie Frank)



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Algeria ends desert siege, but dozens killed


ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian forces stormed a desert gas complex to free hundreds of hostages but 30, including several Westerners, were killed in the assault along with at least 11 of their Islamist captors, an Algerian security source told Reuters.


Western leaders whose compatriots were being held did little to disguise their irritation at being kept in the dark by Algeria before the raid - and over its bloody outcome. French, British and Japanese staff were among the dead, the source said.


An Irish engineer who survived said he saw four jeeps full of hostages blown up by Algerian troops whose commanders said they moved in about 30 hours after the siege began because the gunmen had demanded to be allowed to take their captives abroad.


And while a crisis has ended that posed a serious dilemma for Paris and its allies as French troops attacked the hostage-takers' al Qaeda allies in neighboring Mali, it left question marks over the ability of OPEC-member Algeria to protect vital energy resources and strained its relations with Western powers.


Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among at least seven foreigners killed, the source told Reuters. Eight dead hostages were Algerian. The nationalities of the rest, as well as of perhaps dozens more who escaped, were unclear. Some 600 local Algerian workers, less well guarded, survived.


Fourteen Japanese were among those still unaccounted for by the early hours of Friday, their Japanese employer said.


Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has cancelled part of his trip in Southeast Asia, his first overseas trip since taking office, and is considering flying home early due to the hostage crisis, Japan's top government spokesman said on Friday.


"The action of Algerian forces was regrettable," said Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, adding Tokyo had not been informed of the operation in advance.


Americans, Norwegians, Romanians and an Austrian have also been mentioned by their governments as having been captured by the militants who called themselves the "Battalion of Blood" and had demanded France end its week-old offensive in Mali.


Underlining the view of African and Western leaders that they face a multinational Islamist insurgency across the Sahara - a conflict that prompted France to send hundreds of troops to Mali last week - the official source said only two of the 11 dead militants were Algerian, including the squad's leader.


The bodies of three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman were found, the security source said.


The group had claimed to have dozens of guerrillas on site and it was unclear whether any militants had managed to escape.


The overall commander, Algerian officials said, was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria's bloody civil war of the 1990s. He appears not to have been present and has now risen in stature among a host of Saharan Islamists, flush with arms and fighters from chaotic Libya, whom Western powers fear could spread violence far beyond the desert.


"NO TO BLACKMAIL"


Algeria's government spokesman made clear the leadership in Algiers remains implacably at odds with Islamist guerrillas who remain at large in the south years after the civil war in which some 200,000 people died. Communication Minister Mohamed Said repeated their refusal ever to negotiate with hostage-takers.


"We say that in the face of terrorism, yesterday as today as tomorrow, there will be no negotiation, no blackmail, no respite in the struggle against terrorism," he told APS news agency.


British Prime Minister David Cameron, who warned people to prepare for bad news and who cancelled a major policy speech on Friday to deal with the situation, said through a spokesman that he would have liked Algeria to have consulted before the raid.


A Briton and an Algerian had also been killed on Wednesday.


The prime minister of Norway, whose state energy company Statoil runs the Tigantourine gas field with Britain's BP and Algeria's national oil company, said he too was not informed.


U.S. officials had no clear information on the fate of Americans, though a U.S. military drone had flown over the area. Washington, like its European allies, has endorsed France's move to protect the Malian capital by mounting air strikes last week and now sending 1,400 ground troops to attack Islamist rebels.


A U.S. official said on Thursday it would provide transport aircraft to help France with a mission whose vital importance, President Francois Hollande said, was demonstrated by the attack in Algeria. Some fear, however, that going on the offensive in the remote region could provoke more bloodshed closer to home.


The apparent ease with which the fighters swooped in from the dunes to take control of an important energy facility, which produces some 10 percent of the natural gas on which Algeria depends for its export income, has raised questions, over the value of security measures that are outwardly draconian.


Foreign firms were pulling non-essential staff out of the country, which has recovered stability only in recent years and whose ruling establishment, heirs to fighters who ended French rule 50 years ago, has resisted demands for reform and political freedoms of the kind that swept North Africa in the Arab Spring.


"The embarrassment for the government is great," said Azzedine Layachi, an Algerian political scientist at New York's St John's University. "The heart of Algeria's economy is in the south. where the oil and gas fields are. For this group to have attacked there, in spite of tremendous security, is remarkable."


"KILL INFIDELS"


A local man who had escaped from the facility told Reuters the militants appeared to have inside knowledge of the layout of the complex, supporting the view of security experts that their raid was long-planned, even if the Mali war provided a motive.


"The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels," Abdelkader, 53, said by telephone from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. "'We will kill them,' they said."


Algiers, whose leaders have long had frosty relations with the former colonial power France and other Western countries, may have some explaining to do over its tactics in putting an end to a hostage crisis whose scale was comparable to few in recent decades bar those involving Chechen militants in Russia.


Government spokesman Said sounded unapologetic, however: "When the terrorist group insisted on leaving the facility, taking the foreign hostages with them to neighboring states, the order was issued to special units to attack the position where the terrorists were entrenched," he told state news agency APS, which said some 600 local workers were freed.


The militants said earlier they had 41 foreign hostages.


"ARMY BLASTED HOSTAGES"


Stephen McFaul, an electrical engineer, told his family in Northern Ireland after the operation that he narrowly escaped death, first when bound and gagged by the gunmen who fastened explosives around the hostages' necks and then on Thursday when he was in a convoy of five vehicles driving across the complex.


"(The gunmen) were moving five jeeploads of hostages from one part of the compound," his brother Brian McFaul said. "At that stage, they were intercepted by the Algerian army.


"The army bombed four out of five of the trucks and four of them were destroyed ... He presumed everyone else in the other trucks was killed ... The truck my brother was in crashed and at that stage Stephen was able to make a break for his freedom."


McFaul said it was unclear whether the vehicles had been struck by missiles fired from helicopters or by ground forces.


The attack in Algeria did not stop France from pressing on with its campaign in Mali. It said on Thursday it now had 1,400 troops on the ground there, and combat was under way against the rebels that it first began targeting from the air last week.


"What is happening in Algeria justifies all the more the decision I made in the name of France to intervene in Mali in line with the U.N. charter," Hollande said on Thursday.


The French action last week came as a surprise but received widespread public international support. Neighbouring African countries planning to provide ground troops for a U.N. force by September have said they will move faster to deploy them.


(Additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo, Eamonn Mallie in Belfast, Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Mohammed Abbas in London and Padraic Halpin and Conor Humprhies in Dublin; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Peter Millership and Michael Perry)



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Sahara hostage siege turns Mali war global


ALGIERS/BAMAKO (Reuters) - Islamist fighters have opened an international front in Mali's civil war by taking dozens of Western hostages at a gas plant in the Algerian desert just as French troops launched an offensive against rebels in neighboring Mali.


Nearly 24 hours after gunmen stormed the natural gas pumping site and workers' housing before dawn on Wednesday, little was certain beyond a claim by a group calling itself the "Battalion of Blood" that it was holding 41 foreign nationals, including Americans, Japanese and Europeans, at Tigantourine, deep in the Sahara.


British Foreign Secretary William Hague confirmed one Briton had been killed and "a number" of others were being held hostage. Algerian media said an Algerian was killed in the assault. Another local report said a Frenchman had died.


"This is a dangerous and rapidly developing situation," Hague told reporters in Sydney on Thursday, adding Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron had spoken with the Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.


"We have sent a rapid deployment team from our foreign office in order to reinforce our embassy and consulate staff there. The safety of those involved and their co-workers is our absolutely priority and we will work around the clock to resolve this crisis."


One thing is clear: as a headline-grabbing counterpunch to this week's French buildup in Mali, it presents French President Francois Hollande with a daunting dilemma and spreads fallout from Mali's war against loosely allied bands of al Qaeda-inspired rebels far beyond Africa, challenging Washington and Europe.


A French businessman with employees at the site said the foreigners were bound and under tight guard, while local staff, numbering 150 or more, were held apart and had more freedom.


Led by an Algerian veteran of guerrilla wars in Afghanistan, the group demanded France halt its week-old intervention in Mali, an operation endorsed by Western and African allies who fear that al Qaeda, flush with men and arms from the defeated forces of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, is building a haven in the desert.


Hollande, who won wide praise for ordering air strikes and sending troops to the former French colony, said little in response. In office for only eight months, he has warned of a long, hard struggle in Mali and now faces a risk of attacks on more French and other Western targets in Africa and beyond.


The Algerian government ruled out negotiating and the United States and other Western governments condemned what they called a terrorist attack on a facility, now shut down, that produces 10 percent of Algeria's gas, much of which is pumped to Europe.


The militants, communicating through established contacts with media in neighboring Mauritania, said they had dozens of men at the base, near the town of In Amenas close to the Libyan border, and that they were armed with mortars and anti-aircraft missiles.


They said they had repelled a raid by Algerian forces after dark on Wednesday. There was no government comment on that. Algerian officials said earlier about 20 gunmen were involved.


LIVES AT RISK


The militants issued no explicit threat but made clear the hostages' lives were at risk: "We hold the Algerian government and the French government and the countries of the hostages fully responsible if our demands are not met and it is up to them to stop the brutal aggression against our people in Mali," read one statement carried by Mauritanian media.


The group also said its fighters had rigged explosives around the site and any attempt to free the hostages would lead to a "tragic end." The large numbers of gunmen and hostages involved pose serious problems for any rescue operation.


Smaller hostage-taking incidents have been common in the Sahara and financial gain plays a part in the actions of groups whose members mingle extremist religious aims with traditional smuggling and other pursuits in the lawless, borderless region.


Algerian Interior Minister Daho Ould Kablia said the raid was led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s and recently set up his own group in the Sahara after falling out with other local al Qaeda leaders.


A holy warrior-cum-smuggler dubbed "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence and "Mister Marlboro" by some locals for his illicit cigarette-running business, Belmokhtar's links to those who seized towns across northern Mali last year are unclear.


French media said the militants were also demanding that Algeria, whose government fought a bloody war against Islamists in the 1990s, release dozens of prisoners from its jails.


AMERICANS


The militants said seven Americans were among the 41 foreign hostages - a figure U.S. officials said they could not confirm.


Norwegian energy company Statoil, which operates the gas field in a joint venture with Britain's BP and the Algerian state company Sonatrach, said nine of its Norwegian employees and three of its Algerian staff were being held.


Also reported kidnapped, according to various sources, were five Japanese working for the engineering firm JGC Corp, a French national, an Austrian, an Irishman and the Britons.


U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said: "I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation."


He said he lacked firm information on whether there were links to the situation in Mali. Analysts pointed to shifting alliances and rivalries among Islamists in the region to suggest the hostage-takers may have a range of motives.


In their own statements, they condemned Algeria's secularist government for "betraying" its predecessors in the bloody anti-colonial war against French rule half a century ago by letting French warplanes fly over its territory to Mali. They also accused Algeria of shutting its border to Malian refugees.


Panetta said Washington was still studying legal and other issues before providing more help to France in the war in Mali.


Hollande has called for international support against rebels who France says pose a threat to Africa and the West, and admits it faces a long struggle against well-equipped fighters who seized Timbuktu and other oasis towns in northern Mali and have imposed Islamic law, including public amputations and beheading.


Islamists have warned Hollande that he has "opened the gates of hell" for all French citizens.


Some of those held at the facility, about 1,300 km (800 miles) inland, had sporadic contact with the outside world.


The head of a French catering company said he had information from a manager who supervises some 150 Algerian employees at the site. Regis Arnoux of CIS Catering told BFM television the local staff was being prevented from leaving but was otherwise free to move around inside and keep on working.


"The Westerners are kept in a separate wing of the base," Arnoux said. "They are tied up and are being filmed. Electricity is cut off, and mobile phones have no charge.


"Direct action seems very difficult. ... Algerian officials have told the French authorities as well as BP that they have the situation under control and do not need their assistance."


MALI OFFENSIVE


French army chief Edouard Guillaud said ground forces were stepping up their operation to engage directly "within hours" the alliance of Islamist fighters, grouping al Qaeda's North African wing AQIM and Mali's home-grown Ansar Dine and MUJWA.


West African military chiefs said the French would soon be supported by about 2,000 troops from Nigeria, Chad, Niger and other states - part of a U.N.-mandated deployment that had been expected to start in September before Hollande intervened.


Chad's foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, told Radio France International his country alone would send 2,000 troops, suggesting plans for the regional force were already growing.


In Mali, residents said a column of some 30 French Sagaie armored vehicles had set off toward rebel positions from the town of Niono, 300 km (190 miles) from the capital, Bamako.


A Malian military source said French special forces units were taking part in the operation. Guillaud said France's strikes, involving Rafale and Mirage jet fighters, were being hampered because militants were sheltering among civilians.


Many inhabitants of northern Mali have welcomed the French attacks, although some also fear being caught in the cross-fire.


Hollande said on Tuesday that French forces would remain in Mali until stability returned to the West African nation.


The conflict, in a landlocked state of 15 million twice the size of France, has displaced an estimated 30,000 people and raised concerns across mostly Muslim West Africa of a radicalization of Islam in the region.


But many who have lived for many months under harsh and violent Islamist rule said they welcomed the French.


"There is a great hope," one man said from Timbuktu, where he said Islamist fighters were trying to blend into civilian neighborhoods. "We hope that the city will be freed soon."


(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher and Andrew Callus in London, Balazs Koranyi in Oslo, Laurent Prieur in Nouakchott, Daniel Flynn in Dakar, John Irish, Catherine Bremer and Nick Vinocur in Paris, David Alexander in Rome, Andrew Quinn in Washington and Jane Wardell in Sydney; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Peter Cooney and Michael Perry)



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France to stay in Mali until stability restored


BAMAKO/DUBAI (Reuters) - France pledged on Tuesday to keep troops in Mali until stability returned to the West African country, raising the specter of a long campaign against al Qaeda-linked rebels who held their ground despite a fifth day of air strikes.


Paris has poured hundreds of soldiers into Mali and carried out 50 bombing raids since Friday in the Islamist-controlled northern half of the country, which Western and regional states fear could become a base for terrorist attacks in Africa and Europe.


Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that, despite French air support, Malian forces had not been able to dislodge Islamist fighters from the central Malian towns of Konna or Diabaly, just 350 km (220 miles) northeast of Bamako.


A column of French armored vehicles rolled northward from the dusty riverside capital of Bamako towards rebel lines on Tuesday, the first major northward deployment of ground troops. A military official declined to comment on their objective.


Thousands of African soldiers are due to take over the offensive. Regional armies are scrambling to accelerate an operation which was initially not expected until September and has been brought forward by France's surprise bombing campaign aimed at stopping a rebel advance on a strategic town last week.


President Francois Hollande, on a visit to the United Arab Emirates during which he sought Gulf states' financial backing for the African-led mission, suggested France would retain a major role in its former colony for months to come.


"We have one goal. To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory," Hollande told a news conference.


Paris has said it plans to deploy 2,500 soldiers to bolster the Malian army and work with the intervention force provided by West African states.


AFRICAN TROOPS


West African Defense chiefs met in Bamako on Tuesday to approve plans for the swift deployment of 3,300 regional troops, foreseen in a United Nations-backed intervention plan. After failing to reach a final agreement, they adjourned their talks until Wednesday.


Nigeria pledged to deploy soldiers within 24 hours, and Belgium said it was sending transport planes and helicopters to help, but West Africa's armies need time to become operational.


Mali's north, a vast and inhospitable area of desert and rugged mountains the size of Texas, was seized last year by an Islamist alliance combining al Qaeda's north African wing AQIM with splinter group MUJWA and the home-grown Ansar Dine rebels.


Any delay in following up on the French air bombardments of Islamist bases and fuel depots with a ground offensive could allow the insurgents to slip away into the desert and mountains, regroup and counter-attack.


The rebels, who French officials say are mobile and well armed, have shown they can hit back, dislodging government forces from Diabaly on Monday.


Residents said the town was still under Islamist control on Tuesday despite a number of air strikes that shook houses.


An eye witness near Segou, to the south, told Reuters he had seen 20 French Special Forces soldiers driving toward Diabaly.


In Konna, whose seizure on Thursday sparked French involvement, residents said Islamist fighters were camped just outside town. Army troops had also withdrawn after entering the town on Saturday.


Malians have largely welcomed the French intervention, having seen their army suffer a series of defeats by the rebels.


"With the arrival of the French, we have started to see the situation on the front evolve in our favor," said Aba Sanare, a resident of Bamako.


QUESTIONS OVER READINESS


Aboudou Toure Cheaka, a senior regional official in Bamako, said the West African troops would be on the ground in a week.


The original timetable for the 3,300-strong U.N.-sanctioned African force - to be backed by western logistics, money and intelligence services - did not initially foresee full deployment before September due to logistical constraints.


Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Guinea have all offered troops. Col. Mohammed Yerima, spokesman for Nigeria's Defense ministry, said the first 190 soldiers would be dispatched within 24 hours.


But Nigeria, which is due to lead the mission, has already cautioned that even if some troops arrive in Mali soon, their training and equipping will take more time.


Sub-Saharan Africa's top oil producer, which already has peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur and is fighting a bloody and difficult insurgency at home against Islamist sect Boko Haram, could struggle to deliver on its troop commitment of 900 men.


One senior government adviser in Nigeria said the Mali deployment was stretching the country's military.


"The whole thing's a mess. We don't have any troops with experience of those extreme conditions, even of how to keep all that sand from ruining your equipment. And we're facing battle-hardened guys who live in those dunes," said the adviser, who asked not to be named.


FRENCH LINING UP SUPPORT


France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as policeman of its former African colonies, said on Monday that the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Germany had also offered logistical support.


Fabius has said Gulf Arab states would help the Mali campaign, while Belgium said on Tuesday it would send two C130 transport planes and two medical helicopters following a request from Paris.


A meeting of donors for the operation was expected to be held in Addis Ababa at the end of January.


Security experts have warned that the multinational intervention in Mali, couched in terms of a campaign by governments against "terrorism", could provoke a jihadist backlash against France and the West, and African allies.


U.S. officials have warned of links between AQIM, Boko Haram in Nigeria and al Shabaab Islamic militants fighting in Somalia.


Al Shabaab, which foiled a French effort at the weekend to rescue a French secret agent it was holding hostage, urged Muslims around the world to rise up against what it called "Christian" attacks against Islam.


"Our brothers in Mali, show patience and tolerance and you will win. War planes never liberate a land," Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab's spokesman, said on a rebel-run website.


U.S. officials said Washington was sharing information with French forces in Mali and considering providing logistics, surveillance and airlift capability.


"We have made a commitment that al Qaeda is not going to find any place to hide," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters as he began a visit to Europe. Panetta later said the U.S. had no plans to send troops to Mali.


One U.S. military source said the haphazard nature of French involvement reminded him of the U.S. entry into Afghanistan.


"I don't know what the French endgame is for this," the source said. "Air strikes are fine, but pretty soon you run out of easy targets. Then what do you do? What do you do when they head up into the mountains?"


(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi, Felix Onuah in Abuja and Tim Cocks in Lagos, Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu, Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations,; Richard Valdmanis in Dakar, Joe Bavier in Abidjan, Jan Vermeylen in Brussels; Writing by Pascal Fletcher, Daniel Flynn and David Lewis; editing by Richard Valdmanis, Giles Elgood and Will Waterman)



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West African army chiefs to approve Mali troops plan


BAMAKO (Reuters) - West African defense chiefs will on Tuesday approve plans to speed up the deployment of African troops against Islamist rebels in northern Mali, with some regional soldiers seen arriving next week.


France has already poured hundreds of troops into Mali and carried out days of air strikes in a vast desert area seized last year by an Islamist alliance that combines al Qaeda's north African wing AQIM with Mali's home-grown MUJWA and Ansar Dine rebel groups.


Western and regional powers are concerned the insurgents will use Mali's north as a launchpad for international attacks.


"On January 15, the committee of Chiefs of Defense Staff will meet in Bamako to approve the contingency plan," the mission head of the ECOWAS grouping of West African states, Aboudou Toure Cheaka, told Reuters.


"I can tell you that in one week, the troops will effectively be on the ground," he said, adding their immediate mission would be to help stop the rebel advance while preparations for a full intervention plan continued.


He did not say how many soldiers would arrive.


The original timetable for the 3,300-strong U.N.-sanctioned African force - backed by western logistics, money and intelligence services - did not initially foresee full deployment before September due to logistical constraints.


Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Guinea have all offered troops. But regional powerhouse Nigeria, which is due to lead the mission, has cautioned that even if some troops arrive in Mali soon, training will take more time.


The plan is being fast-tracked after France rushed to respond to a plea for help by Mali's government after mobile columns of Islamist fighters last week threatened the central garrison towns of Mopti and Sevare, with its key airport.


The French defense ministry said on Monday it aimed to deploy some 2,500 soldiers to Mali to bolster the Malian army and the eventual West African force.


"SAFEGUARD MALI"


French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said France's goals were to stop the Islamist rebels, to "safeguard the existence of Mali" and pave the way for the African-led military operation.


U.S. officials said Washington was sharing information with French forces in Mali and considering providing logistics, surveillance and airlift capability.


"We have made a commitment that al Qaeda is not going to find anyplace to hide," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters as he began a visit to Europe.


As French aircraft bombarded mobile columns of Islamist fighters, other insurgents launched a counter-attack further to the south, dislodging government forces from the town of Diabaly, 350 km (220 miles) from Bamako.


French intervention has raised the threat for eight French hostages held by al Qaeda allies in the Sahara and for 30,000 French expatriates living in neighboring, mostly Muslim states. Concerned about reprisals at home, France has tightened security at public buildings and on public transport.


The U.N. said an estimated 30,000 people had fled the latest fighting in Mali, joining more than 200,000 already displaced.


U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday welcomed the French-led military intervention in Mali and voiced the hope that it would halt the Islamist assault.


Amnesty International said at least six civilians were killed in recent fighting in the town of Konna, where French aircraft had earlier bombarded rebel positions, and called on both sides to spare non-combatants.


France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as the policeman of its former African colonies, is among the toughest proponents of a speedier deployment of the African troops, and convened a U.N. Security Council meeting Monday to discuss the crisis.


French U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters after the meeting that the U.S., Canada, Belgium, Denmark and Germany had also offered logistical support for France's Mali operation.


"I felt that all the members of the Security Council were expressing their support (for) and understanding of the French decision," Araud told reporters.


No Europeans or other African Union members will be allowed in the defense chiefs meeting in Bamako on Tuesday, a western diplomat told Reuters, requesting not to be named.


"They don't want any French pressure at the meeting," the diplomat said.


(Reporting by Bate Felix; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations Richard Valdmanis in Dakar, Brian Love in Paris and David Alexander in Lisbon; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Giles Elgood)



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France bombs Islamist strongholds in north Mali


BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) - French fighter jets pounded Islamist rebel strongholds deep in northern Mali on Sunday as Paris poured more troops into the capital Bamako, awaiting a West African force to dislodge al Qaeda-linked insurgents from the country's north.


The attacks on Islamist positions near the ancient desert trading town of Timbuktu and Gao, the largest city in the north, marked a decisive intensification on the third day of the French mission, striking at the heart of the vast area seized by rebels in April.


France is determined to end Islamist domination of northern Mali, which many fear could act as a base for attacks on the West and for links with al Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.


Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France's sudden intervention on Friday had prevented the advancing rebels from seizing Bamako. He vowed that air strikes would continue.


"The president is totally determined that we must eradicate these terrorists who threaten the security of Mali, our own country and Europe," he told French television.


Residents and rebel leaders had reported air raids early on Sunday in the towns of Lere and Douentza in central Mali, forcing Islamists to withdraw. As the day progressed, French jets struck targets further to the north, including near the town of Kidal, the epicenter of the rebellion.


In Gao, a dusty town on the banks of the Niger river where Islamists have imposed an extreme form of sharia law, residents said French jets pounded the airport and rebel positions. A huge cloud of black smoke rose from the militants' camp in the city's north, and trucks ferried dead and wounded to hospital.


"The planes are so fast you can only hear their sound in the sky," resident Soumaila Maiga said by telephone. "We are happy, even though it is frightening. Soon we will be delivered."


Paris said four Rafale jets flew from France to strike rebel training camps, logistics depots and infrastructure around Gao with the aim of weakening the rebels and preventing them from returning southward.


"We blocked the terrorists' advance and from today what we've started to do is to destroy the terrorists' bases behind the front line," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told LCI television.


France has deployed about 550 soldiers to Mali under "Operation Serval" -- named after an African wildcat -- split between Bamako and the town of Mopti, 500 km (300 miles) north.


In Bamako, a Reuters cameraman saw more than 100 French troops disembark on Sunday from a military cargo plane at the international airport, on the outskirts of the capital.


The city's streets were calm, with the sun streaking through the dusty air as the seasonal Harmattan wind blew from the Sahara. Many cars had French flags draped from the windows to celebrate Paris's intervention.


"We thank France for coming to our aid," said resident Mariam Sidibe. "We hope it continues till the north is free."


AFRICAN TROOPS EXPECTED


More than two decades of peaceful elections had earned Mali a reputation as a bulwark of democracy, but that image unraveled in a matter of weeks after a military coup in March which left a power vacuum for the Islamist rebellion.


France convened a U.N. Security Council meeting for Monday to discuss Mali. French President Francois Hollande's intervention has won plaudits from leaders in Europe, Africa and the United States but it is not without risks.


It raised the threat level for eight French hostages held by al Qaeda allies in the Sahara and for the 30,000 French expatriates living in neighboring, mostly Muslim states.


Concerned about reprisals, France has tightened security at public buildings and on public transport. It advised its 6,000 citizens to leave Mali as spokesmen for Ansar Dine and al Qaeda's north Africa wing AQIM promised to exact revenge.


In its first casualty of the campaign, Paris said a French pilot was killed on Friday when rebels shot down his helicopter.


Hours earlier, a French intelligence officer held hostage in Somalia by al Shabaab extremists linked to al Qaeda was killed in a failed commando raid to free him.


Hollande says France's aim is simply to support a mission by West African bloc ECOWAS to retake the north, as mandated by a U.N. Security Council resolution in December.


With Paris pressing West African nations to send their troops quickly, Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, who holds the rotating ECOWAS chairmanship, kick-started the operation to deploy 3,300 African soldiers.


Ouattara, installed in power with French military backing in 2011, convened a summit of the 15-nation bloc for Saturday in Ivory Coast to discuss the mission.


"The troops will start arriving in Bamako today and tomorrow," said Ali Coulibaly, Ivory Coast's African Integration Minister. "They will be convoyed to the front."


The United States is providing transportation and communications support for the push against the Islamist rebels, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.


The U.S. support also includes intelligence sharing, the official said, without elaborating. Earlier on Sunday, another U.S. official said Washington was considering sending a small number of unarmed surveillance drones.


Britain and Canada have also promised logistical support.


Former French colonies Senegal, Niger and Burkina Faso have all pledged to deploy 500 troops within days. In contrast, regional powerhouse Nigeria, due to lead the ECOWAS force, has suggested it would take time to train and equip the troops.


HOUSE-TO-HOUSE SEARCHES


France, however, appeared to have assumed control of the operation on the ground. Its air strikes allowed Malian troops to drive the Islamists out of the strategic town of Konna, which they had briefly seized this week in their southward advance.


Calm returned to Konna after three nights of combat as the Malian army crushed any remaining rebel fighters. A senior army official said more than 100 rebels had been killed.


"Soldiers are patrolling the streets and have encircled the town," one resident, Madame Coulibaly, told Reuters by phone. "They are searching houses for arms or hidden Islamists."


Analysts expressed doubt, however, that African nations would be able to mount a swift operation to retake north Mali -- a harsh, sparsely populated terrain the size of France -- as neither the equipment nor ground troops were prepared.


"My first impression is that this is an emergency patch in a very dangerous situation," said Gregory Mann, associate professor of history at Columbia University, who specializes in francophone Africa and Mali in particular.


While France and its allies may be able to drive rebel fighters from large towns, they could struggle to prise them from mountain redoubts in the region of Kidal, 300 km (200 miles) northeast of Gao.


Human Rights Watch said at least 11 civilians, including three children, had been killed in the fighting. A spokesman for Doctors Without Borders in neighboring Mauritania said about 200 Malian refugees had fled across the border to a camp at Fassala and more were on their way.


In Bamako, civilians tried to contribute to the war effort.


"We are very proud and relieved that the army was able to drive the jihadists out of Konna. We hope it will not end there, that is why I'm helping in my own way," said civil servant Ibrahima Kalossi, 32, one of over 40 people who queued to donate blood for wounded soldiers.


(Additional reporting by Adama Diarra, Tiemoko Diallo and Rainer Schwenzfeier in Bamako, Pascal Fletcher in Johannesburg, Joe Bavier in Abidjan, Catherine Bremer, Leila Aboud and John Irish in Paris and Phil Stewart in Washington; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Will Waterman and Roger Atwood)



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