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By Lamine Chikhi
ALGIERS, Jan 21 (Reuters) - The Islamist attack on thesprawling desert gas complex in southern Algeria that triggeredone of the worst hostage crises in years was conceived in Maliand coordinated by a mystery Canadian named only as Chedad, theAlgerian prime minister said.
Five days after about 40 jihadist fighters raided thefacility not far from the Libyan border and Algeria respondedwith a full-on military operation to kill or capture them, apicture of what happened is emerging.
While some hostages escaped in the early stages of thecrisis, hopes soon faded for dozens of others once the armydecided to take on the raiders.
Workers from the United States, Britain, France, Japan,Romania, Norway and the Philippines were either dead or missing,with the overall death toll among hostages and militants put at67 and potentially rising by up to five.
Those who escaped had harrowing tales to tell. One Britonrecounted how the attackers had strapped Semtex plasticexplosive around his neck, bound his hands and taped his mouth.Another man hid for more than a day and a half under his bed asjihadist fighters searched the workers' residential complex.
Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said the plot hadbeen hatched in war-ravaged Mali and the attackers had travelledthrough Niger and Libya before slipping into Algeria.
The jihadists were said to come from Egypt, Mauritania,Niger, Tunisia, Mali, Algeria and, in one case, from Canada. TheCanadian, identified initially as Chedad, was coordinating theraiders, Sellal said.
The In Amenas gas plant probably felt impregnable to thosewho worked there - fenced in, hundreds of miles from anywhereand with the Algerian army patrolling its desert approaches.
That was a mirage. Libya, an ex-police state turned armsbazaar and now open for jihad, lies just 50 miles away.
At least some of the Islamist guerrillas who stormed inbefore dawn on Wednesday had driven along smugglers' tracksacross the Libyan border, an Algerian security official toldReuters, citing evidence from mobile phones traced to themilitants.
NINE TOYOTAS
The militants arrived in nine Toyotas with Libyan plates andpainted in the colours of Sonatrach, the Algerian oil and gascompany that has a share in the plant, according to the Algeriandaily El Khabar.
The ease with which they entered the fortified housingcompound and nearby natural gas plant left Algerians in littledoubt the gunmen had allies among people at the site.
"They had local cooperation, I'm sure, maybe from drivers orsecurity guards, who helped the terrorists get into the base,"was the immediate reaction of Anis Rahmani, editor of Algeria'sEnnahar newspaper and a writer on security issues who said hewas briefed by officials.
Sellal confirmed that a driver who had formerly worked atthe plant had been supplying information to the raiders.
Locally hired workers who escaped told Reuters of seeing thegunmen moving around the facility with confidence, apparentlyfamiliar with its layout and well prepared.
The militants said they launched the raid to halt Frenchmilitary intervention in neighbouring Mali, which began earlierthis month, however the link is not yet clear.
It is possible the attack would have happened anyway, orthat the French military operation provided a trigger to carryout an attack based on preparations made earlier.
First word of trouble came crackling over a walkie-talkie tothe communications room at In Amenas, where a 27-year-old radiooperator called Azedine logged a contact with a bus driver who,at 5:45 a.m. (0445 GMT), left to take some foreigners to theairstrip at the town of In Amenas, some 50 km (30 miles) away.
"Moments after the bus left, I heard shooting, a lot ofshooting, and then nothing," Azedine told Reuters on Friday.
BUS SKIRMISH
Two people, one British and one Algerian, were killed on twobuses heading for the airport. The Briton was identified as aGulf war veteran who had been in the French Foreign Legion andwas working for a security company.
Sellal said the raiders planned to seize the foreignpassengers, but came under fire from soldiers guarding them.
It is not clear whether that incident was part of the planthat secured the militants access to the compound. Almostimmediately after the bus skirmish, they were inside, in atleast three vehicles.
They shot an Algerian guard but he was able to raise thealarm before dying, Sellal said.
People who have worked at the site say there was normally anovernight curfew, leaving it unclear how the gunmen were able toget so close before being challenged. Their initial approach mayhave been well off the main roads.
Freed hostages spoke of frightened people staying in theiroffices or hiding in their dormitories.
Azedine saw a gunman put on the ID badge of a Frenchsupervisor who had been shot dead.
A French catering firm employee spent 40 hours coweringalone under his bed, terrified he would be killed.
Alexandre Berceaux said he had survived by staying in hisroom away from other foreigners, hidden behind a barricade ofwooden planks and having Algerian colleagues sneak him food andwater.
"I was completely isolated ... I was afraid. I could seemyself already ending up in a wooden box," Berceaux said in aradio interview.
Rapidly the area was surrounded by heavily armed Algeriantroops, with tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopter gunshipsfrom a nearby military base. Sellal said there had been anattempt to negotiate but it had collapsed over thehostage-takers' demands.
SMUGGLERS' TRAILS
People who know the site, operated by Britain's BP andStatoil of Norway along with Algeria's Sonatrach, said abarracks housing several hundred soldiers lies along the threekm (two miles) of road separating the accommodation compoundfrom the industrial plant.
A former senior Algerian government official said guardsappeared to have been caught napping: "They have all kinds ofequipment, detailed surveillance, cameras," he said. "They werecaught maybe at the right time, at five in the morning."
But he also acknowledged the militants may have had helpamong the local workforce: "Out of 700 Algerians, I am sure theywill find a couple who will cooperate. It always happens."
Militant leaders like Taher Ben Cheneb, said by officials tohave been one of the commanders of the operation and to havebeen killed on Thursday, have stoked resentment amongsoutherners at the way foreigners and northerners dominate thebetter paid jobs in the oil fields.
Ben Cheneb, described as a high school maths teacher in his50s, led the Movement of the Islamic Youth in the South.Security expert Rahmani said he joined forces for this operationwith followers of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of Afghan warsand a leading figure in Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)who recently formed a new group named Mulathameen.
Belmokhtar, the overall commander but not present during theattack, claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda for a raidhe called a "blessed operation".
While Ben Cheneb's group appeared to have moved on In Amenasfrom a base inside Algeria, Rahmani said, another group led byAbu El Bara appeared to have come in from Libya.
ONE-EYED JACK
The group's field commander was a veteran fighter from Nigercalled Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, Mauritanian media reported. Heled his men into the gas plant, where he is believed to havebeen killed, while Abu El Bara died at the residential complex.
Noting the one-eyed Belmokhtar's reputation as a cigarettesmuggler as well as a holy warrior - locals call him "MisterMarlboro" - Rahmani added: "They use the same back roads as thesmugglers. You need a perfect knowledge of the Sahara to do it.
Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler, who was captured byBelmokhtar in Niger in 2008 and released after four months,nicknamed him "Jack" so as to be able to discuss him privatelywith fellow captives. Belmokhtar in turn referred to hisprisoners as apostates and infidels.
More than a decade after Algeria's civil war killed some200,000 people, Islamist fighters roam the sandy wastes ofAfrica's biggest country, mixing smuggling and kidnapping forransom with opposition to the political establishment that hasruled in Algiers since French colonists left half a century ago.
These groups have been energised by the return of heavilyarmed ethnic Tuaregs and others from Libya, where they fought asmercenaries for Muammar Gaddafi until his overthrow in 2011. Thenew Libyan authorities are struggling to control their own deepsouth and it provides a launchpad for raids across the frontier.
ARMY ASSAULT
While security forces seek to impose control, the tracts ofsand are vast, borders among the half dozen countries around thedesert are unmarked, and the big money that can be made fromillicit trade or kidnapping tourists and Western engineers canbe used to buy favours from ill-paid officials.
Al Qaeda says it is fighting for a Muslim caliphate thattranscends artificial borders in the Maghreb set by colonialpowers.
Once inside the facility, militants, including bearded,ragged fighters and others in more urban dress, herded groups ofWesterners together. Hundreds of Algerians were guarded moreloosely. One Algerian worker told Reuters the gunmen said theywere only interested in killing "Christians and infidels".
Algeria told Western governments, which voiced dismay at thestorming of the facility on Thursday, that troops moved in onlybecause guerrillas were trying to leave with hostages, hoping toreach Mali.
The captors loaded hostages into a convoy. Special forcesbacked by helicopters moved in around noon, some 30 hours afterthe plant was seized.
In what appears to have been the deadliest part of thesiege, as described by the family of Irish survivor StephenMcFaul, government forces bombed the convoy, blasting apart fourvehicles full of hostages. McFaul was in a fifth truck whichcrashed. He dashed for his life and escaped, and believes allthose in the other vehicles were killed.
McFaul told how the attackers had turned him into a humanbomb, strapping Semtex around his neck.
Another Briton, Garry Barlow, called his wife from withinthe site during the attack and said: "I'm sat here at my deskwith Semtex strapped to my chest."
During Thursday, most of the hundreds of people at the sitewere able to flee, some of them Westerners posing as Algerians.
"We cut the wire with clippers and ran for it, all together,about 50 of us with the three foreigners," one man was quoted assaying by The Times.
By Friday night, it remained unclear how many of the gunmenand their hostages were still in the facility.
The operation at the larger, residential compound was overand troops were now surrounding the industrial site, whereNigeri and his men were reported to be holding a group ofhostages.
But this left Western governments and intelligenceofficials, long used to difficult relations with Algeria whichis proud of its sovereignty, desperate for hard facts about thefate of their nationals.
Western capitals seemed to be in the dark when the dramaticand bloody final assault came on Saturday morning.
Algerian soldiers shot dead 11 gunmen who had executed sevenforeign hostages, according to the state news agency. Themilitants were then found to have booby-trapped the gas complexwith explosives, which the army had to defuse.
The operation was over, authorities said, but mopping upwent on for hours, with dozens more bodies found and manyquestions still to be answered.
