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Foreigners abducted by Islamist militants in Algeria

Two foreign nationals, one of them British, have been killed and several abducted in an attack by Islamist militants on a gas facility in eastern Algeria, state media report.

Several people were also wounded when a bus carrying workers from a gas facility near In Amenas was targeted.

After being repelled, the militants travelled to the facility, taking an unknown number of workers hostage.

Militants linked to al-Qaeda claim to have been behind the incident.

They initially said they were holding six people hostage, but an alleged spokesman later told two Mauritanian news websites they were holding 41 foreigners, including US, French, British and Japanese citizens.

The Norwegian public broadcaster NRK quoted the oil company Statoil as saying there had been 17 personnel in total at the gas facility when it was taken over by the militants, 13 of whom were Norwegian nationals.

The In Amenas gas field is operated by the Algerian state oil company, Sonatrach, along with Statoil and the British oil company BP. It is about 1,300km (800 miles) south-east of the capital, Algiers, and about 60km west of the Libyan border.

The attack came after militants vowed to avenge France’s military intervention in Mali, where its forces have been battling Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) for the past week. Algeria has been allowing French aircraft to use its air space.

‘Undetermined number’

The Algerian interior ministry said a heavily-armed “terrorist group” using three vehicles had attacked the bus carrying workers from the In Amenas gas field at about 05:00 (04:00 GMT).

The attack was “repelled by the escort units”, but one foreign national was killed and six people – two foreigners, two police and two security personnel – were wounded, a statement said.

The group then drove directly to the base and took hostage an “undetermined number of workers, including foreign nationals”, the interior ministry added.

Later, the state-run APS news agency cited local officials as saying two foreigners had been killed in the attack, one of them a British national. A local source earlier told the Reuters news agency a Frenchman had died.

The Algerian military has reportedly launched an operation to rescue the hostages and surrounded the gas workers’ camp at Tiguentourine.

Initial reports said five Japanese nationals and a Frenchman had been kidnapped, but a Western diplomat told the French news agency AFP those abducted included British and Norwegian staff.

The UK government confirmed that “several British nationals” had been involved in a “terrorist incident”.

Prime Minister David Cameron had chaired a meeting of the cabinet emergency committee to discuss the “sensitive and ongoing situation”, and was due to speak to his Algerian counterpart later, it said.

Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said one of its nationals had been abducted, adding that his government was “ready to use all the resources available to us to ensure that our citizen is released as soon as possible”.

A Japanese contractor at the In Amenas gas facility, JGC Corp, confirmed that Japanese staff had been seized, according to Japanese media.

The wife of a Norwegian gas worker was quoted as saying by the Bergens Tidende newspaper as saying: “I received a phone call from my husband this morning and he said he had been kidnapped.”

BP confirmed that there had been a “security incident”.

“The site was attacked and occupied by a group of unidentified armed people,” a statement said. “Contact with the site is extremely difficult, but we understand that armed individuals are still occupying the In Amenas operations site.”

“We do not yet have confirmed information on the status of personnel at the site but believe some are being held by the occupiers. We are attempting to get confirmed information at the moment as to whether there have been any injuries to personnel at the site.”

The company said it had “activated its emergency response system” and was contacting relatives of its personnel on the site.

Warning

A man claiming to be a spokesman for the militants told BBC Arabic that al-Qaeda had carried out the attack.

He claimed that they had allowed Algerian workers to leave the gas facility and were only holding foreign nationals.

A list of demands had been sent to the Algerian authorities, and the hostages would be killed if troops attempted to rescue them, the spokesman added.

”Storming the gas complex would be easy for the Algerian military, but the outcome of such an operation would be disastrous,” he warned.

Earlier, a group known as the Khaled Abu al-Abbas Brigade told the AFP news agency that it had kidnapped the workers.

The Khaled Abu al-Abbas Brigade is believed to be led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar – also known as Abu al-Abbas – who was a senior commander of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb before late last year, when he set up his own armed group after apparently falling out with other leaders.

His new group is also known as the Signed-in Blood Battalion, a spokesman for whom told the Mauritanian Sahara Media website that it had “captured 41 Westerners, including seven Americans, two French citizens, two British citizens and two Japanese”.