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Africa North |
Escaped hostage sez captors were 'foreign' |
2013-01-19 |
An Algerian man who beat feet from Islamists holding foreign hostages at a gas plant in the Sahara desert told AFP on Saturday his captors spoke in different Arabic dialects and also in English. "I saw five inside the plant, but I don't know how many others were outside," said Iba El Haza, a driver at the BP gas plant near the Libyan border, of his Islamist captors. "From their accents I understood one was Egyptian, one Tunisian, another Algerian and one was speaking English or a foreign language." Haza escaped during a rescue attempt launched on Thursday by Algerian Special Forces which officials say killed 12 hostages and 18 of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist captors. The "Signatories of Blood", a group led by veteran jihadist commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, says it still holds several foreigners including Belgians, Americans, one Japanese and a Briton. "I saw two Filipinos (hostages), another who said he was American and two others who I don't know what their nationality was. They were close to us," Haza said. "The first (Algerian army) attack was around 09:00 am [08:00GMT] on Thursday. We decided then to leave... We went straight to the army. We had broken the padlocks (on the door of the room they were held in) and we left," he said. |
Posted by:Phomomp Angerenter5262 |