Militants with possible links to al Qaeda seized about 40 foreign
hostages, including several Americans, at a natural-gas field in
Algeria, posing a new level of threat to nations trying to blunt the
growing influence of Islamist extremists in Africa.
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WSJ Pentagon correspondent Julian Barnes
joins The News Hub from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta 's press corps in
Rome, where hours ago he declared the Algeria attack an act of
terrorism. WSJ's Drew Hinshaw has the latest on the ground from Bamako,
Mali. Photo: AP.
As security
officials in the U.S. and Europe assessed options to reach the captives
from distant bases, Algerian security forces failed in an attempt late
Wednesday to storm the facility.
A French effort to drive Islamist
militants from neighboring Mali that began with airstrikes last week
expanded on Wednesday with the first sustained fighting on the ground.
France's top target, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, claimed
responsibility for the Algeria kidnappings, calling it retaliation. The
claim couldn't be verified, although AQIM has its origins in Algeria and
operates across a swath of Africa.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the U.S. would take "necessary
and proper steps" in the hostage situation, and didn't rule out military
action. He said the Algeria attack could represent a spillover from
Mali.
Reuters
About 40 foreigners were
abducted in a raid on the In Amenas gas facility, above. An Islamist
group fighting the French in neighboring Mali claimed responsibility for
the attack.
U.S. and
European officials said Wednesday that they received reports that three
Americans had been kidnapped, out of a total of nine U.S. staff working
at the site, a gas field in east-central Algeria, along the Libyan
border operated by
BP
BP.LN -0.24%
PLC, Norway's
Statoil ASA
STL.OS +0.77%
and Algerian energy company Sonatrach.
U.S.
officials have struggled for a year or more to devise a response to the
many Islamist militant groups, some with ties to al Qaeda, across
northern and western Africa.
"We have been concerned about Mali,
because they would use it as a base of operations to do exactly what
happened in Algeria," Mr. Panetta said.
With intelligence reports "streaming
in" on the Algeria siege, according to a senior intelligence official,
some U.S. officials said confirming early suspicions that AQIM was
involved was complicated by the group's loose structure.
The militants at the complex are believed to be headed by Mohktar
Belmokhtar, a member of AQIM who has been a top target of the Algerian
military for years, said Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence
Agency analyst who is now a counterterrorism fellow at the Brookings
Institution.
In late 2012, Mr. Belmokhtar set up a group apart from AQIM, calling
it al Mouthalimin, or Those Who Sign with Blood. If he is behind
Wednesday's raid, it would suggest the commander continues to share the
broader objective of the al Qaeda franchise.
Al Qaeda has rarely taken American
hostages, however. If AQIM is involved, the operation represents a "big
step up" for a group that has long been considered by the U.S. as a
lesser terrorist threat than other al Qaeda branches, said Bruce
Hoffman, an al Qaeda specialist and professor at Georgetown University.
"This
obviously was planned for some time," he said. "The fact that they can
flex their muscles like this and choose the timing shows they had the
ability to take advantage of this opportunity."
There are a number of options for
freeing the hostages, said Seth Jones, an al Qaeda specialist at Rand
Corp., including ransom negotiations by BP, U.S. government negotiations
and a U.S. military operation after significant intelligence collection
on the site.
The U.S. has used special-operations
forces in recent years in Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere when
launching rescue operations to free hostages taken by militant groups.
But none of the rescues has involved large numbers of hostages.
While Algeria may not be an easy
destination for American forces, the U.S. military has been bulking up
its presence in Africa. There are an estimated 2,000 U.S. personnel at
Camp Lemonier, a joint U.S.-French base in Djibouti, that also serves as
a base of operations for U.S. special-operations forces as well as Air
Force drones that conduct lethal missions in Yemen.
The Algerian government is likely to
resist an American-led military rescue, though they would probably
accept U.S. intelligence support, said Mr. Riedel.
Algerians said the hostage crisis revived their deepest fear of
seeing AQIM, a group whose main roots are in Algeria, spread from their
strongholds in Mali to sow havoc in bordering nations.
"The minute the French military started pushing AQIM groups from the
south of Mali, it was quite evident they would move north and into
Algeria," said Adbelhamid Si Afif, a senior member of Algeria's
pro-government party Front de Libération Nationale. "They have the power
to shake up the entire region."
The militants, after raiding the energy complex, took positions
inside living quarters there with a number of Algerian and foreign
workers, the Algerian government said.
Algeria reported two deaths in
Wednesday's raid, a Briton and an Algerian, but reports of the number of
casualties and hostages varied widely.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens
Stoltenberg said 13 Norwegians were involved in the hostage situation.
"This is one of the most serious hostage situations to affect Norwegian
citizens" and companies, he said.
The U.K. confirmed that British citizens
were being held. The French government said it couldn't confirm the
presence of French nationals in the base.
BP said that contact with the site,
named In Amenas, was extremely difficult. In Amenas harbors nearly 50
oil and natural-gas fields, linked to the northern coast through several
pipelines.
Sonatrach didn't have any comment on the situation.
French military forces joined Malian
troops on Friday in battling Islamist rebels in the West African nation,
amid Western fears that insurgent groups with links to al Qaeda could
destabilize the region and gain the ability to strike overseas.
French officials have said they feared
the campaign could lead jihadist movements to target French and Western
interests in retaliation. Interior Minister Manuel Valls said France's
internal and external security services are "particularly vigilant" amid
a "very strong and permanent," terrorist threat in France.
Algeria, which has traditionally
championed a noninterventionist policy and had voiced reservations about
any foreign military role in Mali, allowed French combat jets to fly
through its airspace and said on Monday that it would close its southern
border with Mali.
Analysts said they were skeptical that
Algeria, although the strongest military force in the region, would
succeed in sealing the border.
"It's possible to reinforce control on
that border, but closing it is virtually impossible," said analyst
Mohamed Chafik Mesbah, a retired officer of the Algerian army.
On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers cited the attacks in Algeria as
well as last year's attack on a U.S. Consulate in Libya to press the
Obama administration to step up its efforts against al Qaeda.
"The Obama Administration needs to have a clear and focused policy on
eliminating the threats that diverse al Qaeda affiliated groups pose to
the United States and to Americans working abroad off of the usual
battlefields," said House intelligence committee chairman Rep. Mike
Rogers (R., Mich.)
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President Obama unveiled a