Wüstenschiff

The goal of the heavily armed militants who seized the desert gas plant here is becoming increasingly clear: to turn the forest of pipes and tubes into a giant bomb, and to blow up everything and anyone around. What none of them knew was exactly how, in the endless maze of metal, to do it [...] As the realization dawned on the captors that they, too, were essentially captives, they grew agitated and more aggressive, witnesses say. Moreover, the plant’s operations had shut down during their initial assault.

Seit dem blutigen Überfall auf ein Gasfeld in der algerischen Wüste Anfang des Jahres kommen immer mehr Details ans Licht. Nach Berichten über den Tod des Anführers Mokhtar Belmokhtar heißt es jetzt, dass zwei Kanadier unter den Angreifern gewesen sein sollen. Sie hatten sich mit ihren Geiseln in die Luft gesprengt.

Intelligence types have been warning for years, in language as frank as this lot can use, that increasing numbers of young Canadians are being radicalized - either to fight overseas or, as with the so-called "Toronto 18" group of a few years ago, at home.

Birgitt hat geschrieben:

...heißt es jetzt, dass zwei Kanadier unter den Angreifern gewesen sein sollen.

Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago. The extent of the contacts between the militants is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January. But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates stretching ever further across North and West Africa.