Survivors share stories of escape as messages fall silent
Extraordinary accounts of survivors hiding for days in roof spaces while others had Semtex high explosive strapped to their necks emerged Friday as the alQaida hostage crisis entered its final stages.
Up to a dozen hostages were still believed to be inside the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria Friday night, with about 16 on their way home after escaping. Many of the remaining hostages had kept in contact with their families by cellphone in the early stages of the crisis, but one source said their text messages were now “drying up.”
Amid the horror were stories of incredible escapes as overseas workers thwarted the 32 kidnappers from the Masked Brigade.
One source working for a company with British staff inside the compound said it was hoped the drop in texts was nothing more than dead batteries.
Three Britons hid in silence between the ceiling and the roof of their accommodation block for two days, said a Frenchman who was freed with them when the Algerian army fought their way through the compound.
“We found three English people hidden in a false ceiling and a wounded person, who was taken straight to the hospital,” said Alexandre Berceaux, a catering worker.
He said he heard a “huge amount” of shots when the terrorist attack began on Wednesday morning.
“The alarm telling us to stay where we are went off,” Berceaux said. “I didn’t know whether it was an exercise or whether it was real.
“I stayed hidden for 40 hours in my bedroom. I was under the bed and put planks all over the place just in case. I had a little food, a little water, I had no idea how long it was going to last. Nobody expected this.”
He was rescued late Thursday after the Algerian army launched a ground assault. He said his Algerian colleagues had kept him hidden.
One Algerian said that as the kidnappers smashed down doors they made it clear they were interested only in westerners, shouting: “If you’re Algerian you can go, get your stuff and get out!”
The worker added: “They rounded up all the expats, tied them up and took them off.”
Many of the hostages had explosives strapped to them so that the kidnappers, who had told Algerians they would kill all the “Christians and infidels” on site, could blow them up at will. They included Stephen McFaul, a Briton who fled with a bomb strapped to him when a convoy in which he was travelling came under attack from army helicopters.
McFaul, 36, told his family that he had Semtex strapped to his neck, which his kidnappers had threatened to detonate if there was any rescue attempts. He had his hands bound and his mouth taped. His brother, Brian, said he was made to sleep with the Semtex around his neck. “Then we found out how he got free,” he said. “(The terrorists) were moving a convoy out of the compound or to a different part of the compound and Stephen was in one of the Jeeps.
“There were five Jeeps and the Algerian army had bombed the Jeeps. … Out of the five Jeeps four were wiped out. Obviously they lost their lives, but luckily for my brother he was in the Jeep that crashed and was able to make a break for freedom — with the Semtex around his neck.”