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Eugene

(61,595 posts)
Sun Jan 20, 2013, 01:57 PM Jan 2013

Veteran jihadist claims bloody Algeria siege for al Qaeda

Source: Reuters

Veteran jihadist claims bloody Algeria siege for al Qaeda

By Lamine Chikhi and Abdelaziz Boumzar
ALGIERS/IN AMENAS, Algeria | Sun Jan 20, 2013 11:50am EST

(Reuters) - A veteran Islamist fighter claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda for the Algerian hostage crisis, a regional website reported on Sunday, tying the bloody desert siege to France's intervention across the Sahara in Mali.

Algeria said it expected to raise its preliminary death tolls of 23 hostages and 32 militants killed in the four-day siege at a gas plant deep in the Sahara.

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"We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation," Mokhtar Belmokhtar said in a video, according to the Sahara Media website, which quoted from the recording but did not immediately show it.

"We are ready to negotiate with the West and the Algerian government provided they stop their bombing of Mali's Muslims," said Belmokhtar, a one-eyed veteran guerrilla who fought in Afghanistan in 1980s and in Algeria's civil war in the 1990s.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/20/us-sahara-crisis-idUSBRE90F1JJ20130120
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