The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has said that four Filipinos who survived the siege of a remote natural gas plant by Islamic militants in Algeria was scheduled to arrive Tuesday.
It was troubling to see the photograph on the front page of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on Jan. 19 of a patient lying apparently unconscious, his head heavily bandaged and in a neck-brace, with Algerian Minister Youcef Yousfi and a doctor looking anxiously down at him. The photo caption only said it was a “freed Filipino hostage” and the accompanying AFP (Agence France Presse) report did not identify him.
The seven Japanese survivors of the Algerian hostage crisis, and nine of the 10 dead, arrived back in a shell-shocked Japan Friday as the prime minister spoke of the nation’s “deepest grief”.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said that another Filipino has been confirmed killed in last week’s siege by Islamic militants of a remote natural gas plant in Algeria, bringing to eight the total number of Filipino fatalities.
Four more overseas Filipino workers from the Algerian gas facility that was attacked by Islamic militants last week arrived in Manila on Wednesday.
Estrella Santiago refuses to totally believe that her husband Iluminado—Bong to family and friends—was among the Filipinos killed by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Algeria last week.
Islamic militants used foreign hostages as human shields to stop Algerian troops aboard helicopters from strafing them with gunfire. This was the account of survivor Joseph Balmaceda who arrived in Manila Monday.
At least 81 people have been reported dead, including 32 Islamist militants, after a bloody, four-day hostage situation at Algeria’s remote Ain Amenas natural gas plant. Two dozen foreign workers remained unaccounted for late Sunday.
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.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Sunday that 52 Filipinos caught up in the Algerian hostage crisis had been accounted for, but it was still not known whether any Philippine nationals were among the dead.
Governments scrambled Sunday to track down missing nationals after the bloody end to a gas plant siege in the heart of the Algerian Sahara that saw Islamists kill 23 foreign and Algerian hostages.
Foreign workers abducted by Islamist militants in Algeria were garlanded with explosives and put into trucks rigged with bombs, the wife of one of the Filipino captives recounted Saturday.
