Daily Lessons from Life 20 January 2013 - Fate of Algeria gas plant hostages, country by country

"Fate of Algeria gas plant hostages, country by country - AFP Jan 20, 2013

ALGIERS - Algerian forces found 25 bodies of hostages on Sunday, Ennahar TV said, after a crisis that began when Islamists attacked a gas plant on Wednesday and ended with a bloody final military assault on Saturday.

A preliminary interior ministry count gave a figure of 21 hostages killed during the episode. Two other employees of the facility, a Briton and an Algerian, it said, were killed on a bus just before the kidnapping attack.

Thirty-two kidnappers were also killed, and special forces were able to free hundreds of Algerian and foreign workers, the ministry said, without specifying their nationalities.

Below is a country-by-country compilation of available provisional information:

- ALGERIA: One Algerian;   - BELGIUM: three Belgians were at the site following the Algerian raid.  

- BRITAIN: Three Britons are dead, and another three British expats and one British resident are believed to be dead, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Sunday. Another 22 Britons who survived are being repatriated.

- COLOMBIA: One Colombian believed to be among the hostages killed;

- FRANCE: a Frenchman, Yann Desjeux - a restaurateur from southeastern France and a former special forces soldier - were among the dead. Three other French nationals have been rescued.

- JAPAN: Seventeen Japanese nationals were at the plant at the time of the attack. An Algerian hostage said on Sunday that nine of them were executed by their captors from Wednesday. Tokyo had said they had no information about at least 10 of their citizens.

- MALAYSIA: Authorities in Kuala Lumpur said Saturday they had no news about two of their nationals. Three others are safe.

- NORWAY: Five Norwegian nationals remain unaccounted for, according to the oil group Statoil which runs the In Amenas site along with BP and Algerian group Sonatrach. Statoil had 17 employees at the site when the hostage-taking occurred. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said it was "possible" Norwegians may have died.

- PHILIPPINES: Fifty-two Filipinos caught up in the crisis are accounted for, and 39 Filipino survivors of the siege returned home on Sunday, foreign affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said. Manila has refused to confirm reports of two dead.

- ROMANIA: One Romanian was killed and a second was wounded during the hostage-taking, Bucharest said Saturday. It said earlier three Romanians had been freed.

- UNITED STATES: The State Department on Friday confirmed one American, Frederick Buttaccio, died in the hostage crisis. NBC News reported earlier that one American had been killed, two others had escaped unharmed and that the fates of another two Americans were unknown.

Citing sources close to the Islamists, Mauritania's ANI news agency said Thursday that two Americans were being held by their abductors."

What the FxxK!!

Lessons for me are:

1. terrorists have NO LOGIC or warped LOGIC? Kidnapping workers at oil & gas sites when the workers were merely carrying out their work and making a living is TOTALLY insane logic to 'show case the causes the terrorists SUPPOSEDLY are fighting for!! DID they declare FIRST that these sites are UNHOLY sites and anyone who work there WILL be KILLED? NO!! They just attacked!!;

2. the Algerian government is in a no-win situation. Do nothing and things will draw on and the WORLD's attention will be on this site. Do something quickly, like what they had done, may, or in this case, DID result in many hostages being killed, some by friendly fires (?) as who the HELL know who is firing at who! This is NOT Hollywood or Bollywood or Hong Kong movies, these are REAL PEOPLE getting killed without even know what the heck happened! The Algerian government has a STAND that it DOES NOT negotiate with terrorists, probably for a good reason as there will be no ends if it does negotiate with terrorists. Stick to the GUN and lives are lost. Anger will rise. Emotion will run high and harsh words and condemnation flows - for while anyway. It will then die down as people have to get on with business though the families of those killed WILL never or take a long time to forget this tragic and senseless loss of their loved ones;

3. for those who lost their lives, may they rest in peace even if they will never know what hit them or WHY they and not someone else get this terrible hand life dealt them! They were just going about doing their jobs, to make a living to support their loved ones. It is NOT a war zone. This should never happen to them. Except they are dealing with LUNATICS. No logic or Warped logic applied.

It has to be FATE. It is easier to accept and let go if one accepts that it is just FATE. Nothing doing.