An Algerian official said he feared that the death toll would rise.
"I am unfortunately very concerned that this balance will be revised upwards," Algeria's Minister of Communication Mohamed Said said Sunday on Algerian national radio. He said the militants were of at least six nationalities, without being more specific.
The sweeps came as a Mauritanian news Web site claimed it had received a video from Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the al-Qaeda-linked extremist who has claimed responsibility for the attack. The Sahara News Agency described Belmokhtar as saying that he would be willing to negotiate over the hostages; the video apparently was made Thursday, before the Algerian military operations against the militants.
"We are ready to negotiate with Western countries and the Algerian regime on the condition that they halt aggression and bombing against the Muslim people of Mali. . .and respect their desire to apply Shariah on their territory," the Web site quoted Belmokhtar as saying. The site did not post the video, but Belmokhtar previously has communicated through Mauritanian news services.
Defying international calls for restraint, Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert on Saturday to end a standoff with Islamist extremists that, over four days, left at least 23 hostages dead and killed all 32 militants involved, the Algerian government said.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday confirmed that three Britons had died and three more, along with a British resident, were feared dead.
Cameron called for an extended and international counterterrorism response. Though he did not specify any new British commitments, he said he would use Britain's chairmanship of the G-8 group of nations this year to push the issue toward the top of the global agenda. "This is a global threat and it will require a global response. It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months," he said.
An Algerian security official quoted by the news agencies suggested that the militants killed the hostages as forces moved in on their position. Earlier reports indicated that the heavily armed militants were holding two Americans, three Belgians, a Japanese and a Briton in one section of the compound, but there was as yet no official confirmation of the identities of the victims.
Algeria's interior minister, Daho Ould Kablia, said on state television Saturday evening that the standoff was over, and that in all it had resulted in the deaths of 32 terrorists and at least 23 foreign hostages. Ould Kablia said troops had found a huge amount of military equipment and highly sophisticated weapons in the complex.
0 comments:
Post a Comment