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* Evidence of links between Benghazi, In Amenas attackers
* AQIM spreads far beyond its roots in Algeria
* Western targets in region include mines and energy sites
By Lamine Chikhi and Myra MacDonald
ALGIERS/LONDON Aug 9 (Reuters) - Inquiries into the bloodyassault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasingevidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadisinvolved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a yearago.
The extent of the contacts between the militants is stillunclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between theattack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at InAmenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January.
But the findings, according to three sources with separateknowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on theconnections between Al Qaeda affiliates stretching ever furtheracross North and West Africa.
The lack of detail, meanwhile, highlights the paucity ofintelligence on jihadis whose rise has been fuelled by the 2011Arab uprisings and who have shown ready to strike scatteredWestern targets including mines and energy installations.
That makes the region an even greater worry for Westerncountries at a time of heightened security over the threat ofmore al Qaeda attacks in the Middle East and North Africa.
At the centre of the web is Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb(AQIM), which has expanded far from its Algerian birthplace andnow has links to other jihadi groups in Maghreb countries,including Tunisia and Libya. Their shared ideology combines withother, often financial, interests.
"Its leaders are survivors; they are opportunists," saidStephen Tankel, an Assistant Professor at American University inWashington.
"And now the environment throughout the Maghreb has becomeconducive to expansion as well," said Tankel, who is writing abook on how jihadis adapted after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks onthe United States.
EXPANSION DRIVE
AQIM grew from the factions that fought Algeria's civil warin the 1990s. With its central leadership hidden in themountains of northern Algeria, it pledged its allegiance to alQaeda six years ago as one of the poles of global jihad.
Despite being driven from large parts of the West Africanstate of Mali by a French-led military operation early thisyear, AQIM militants are strengthening their presence elsewhere.
Four months after the In Amenas raid, the attack'smastermind, Mokhtar Belmokhtar - who has strained butfunctioning relations with AQIM's leadership - claimedresponsibility for an attack on a uranium mine run by France'sAreva in Niger far to the south.
Belmokhtar has also launched attacks in the past inMauritania, while AQIM uses the centuries-old Mauritaniantradition of Islamic scholarship to give religious justificationto its actions - as well as increasing its regional appeal.
With tension growing in Tunisia between oppositionsecularists and the Islamist government, hardline Salafists arean increasingly important part of the equation there.
AQIM is believed to be involved in fighting with theTunisian army on the Tunisian-Algerian border, according to anAlgerian security source.
At the same time, AQIM is building links with groups such asthe Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia, which seeks to expand its followersthrough Salafist missionary work or "dawa" rather than violentjihad.
"My own take is that there is a great deal of overlapbetween these groups," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross at theFoundation for Defense of Democracies and an expert on al Qaeda.
FROM BENGHAZI TO IN AMENAS
AQIM's links to Libyan groups have grown stronger during thechaos that ensued after the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi,who had kept all Islamists in check.
Some of the men involved in the Algerian raid took part inthe attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012,when Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americansdied, one source with knowledge of the inquiry said.
A second source said there had definitely been some kind ofcontact between the Benghazi and In Amenas attackers but couldnot say to what extent.
A third source said some of the jihadis at In Amenas hadbought weapons and stayed for months in the Libyan city of ElAouinet near the Algerian border, where they met some of the menbehind the Benghazi attack.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources would not bequoted on where they got their information.
The United States has not said who was behind the Benghaziattack, though the Ansar al-Sharia Libya - a loose group ofSalafists in eastern Libya - is a prime suspect. The name"ansar" means helpers.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri had called for revengeattacks on Americans in Libya the day before the attack on theconsulate, but there was no claim of responsibility from alQaeda's central leadership in Pakistan or AQIM - which usuallyreleases statements through a Mauritanian news agency.
LIMITED INTELLIGENCE
Despite the growing suspicions of a connection between theattacks at Benghazi and In Amenas, intelligence is scant.
Security agencies have not even found out whether Libya,Mali or both countries served as the bases for the attack on thegas plant run by BP, Statoil and Algerianstate-owned Sonatrach.
"These groups are so fluid and move so quickly that we can'tsay with any certainty where they were," said a fourth, Western,intelligence source.
Even compared to other al Qaeda groups, AQIM has shown anability to evade intelligence services.
Terrain and geography help: The United States has only twoor three surveillance drones in a region bigger than westernEurope. Telling militants apart from traders and smugglers inthe Sahara's rock and sand is not easy from the sky.
For Western intelligence agencies, the Sahara was never asmuch a focus as regions such as the Arabian peninsula orPakistan.
Fragile African states to the south of the Sahara havelimited capacity for intelligence gathering.
Algeria's more robust security services have a record ofinfiltrating local Islamist groups, but AQIM's increased spreadhas allowed it to recruit new faces unknown to the Algerians:two of the attackers at In Amenas were Canadians.
None of the security sources nor the diplomats interviewedhad a clear idea as to where AQIM's forward bases were now.
Some thought they could still be in the Ifgoghas mountainsin Mali's north, others that the jihadis would gravitate toLibya to buy weapons, but might avoid setting up there becausethe country's myriad armed factions make it too unstable forthem.
"The next safe haven will be Niger," suggested one Algeriansource. Countries across the region reject any suggestion thattheir own soil could harbour AQIM's latest desert base.
One thing intelligence services agree on is that AQIM willbecome a greater threat as it spreads further from its roots,rather than fragmenting.
Few experts are ready to guess where the jihadis mightstrike next, but with oil and gas installations across NorthAfrica and Western-run mining and energy firms established onthe Sahara's southern fringes, there is no shortage of potentialtargets.
