Before dawn on 16 January 2013, a guard named Mohamed Lamine Lahmar made a decision that would cost him his life and save many others. Militants were storming the Tigantourine gas plant in the deep Algerian Sahara, and Lahmar reached the plant-wide alarm and set it screaming across the site. The warning gave workers seconds to hide and to begin shutting down the systems that, if detonated, could have destroyed the entire facility. Moments later, the attackers shot him dead. He was the only Sonatrach employee killed in the attack that followed - four days of terror at a remote desert outpost that would end with the deaths of around forty hostages from across the world, and would force questions, still unsettled, about how it was allowed to happen.
The Tigantourine gas facility sits about 40 kilometers southwest of the town of In Amenas in far eastern Algeria, close to the Libyan border and some 1,300 kilometers from Algiers. It is run by the Algerian state company Sonatrach in partnership with Britain's BP and Norway's Statoil, and it supplies roughly a tenth of Algeria's natural gas. Like many such installations, it drew workers from around the globe - Algerians and expatriates living side by side in a compound far from anywhere. In the early morning of 16 January, around thirty-two militants in a handful of vehicles, having crossed in from Libya and northern Mali, attacked a bus carrying employees from the plant and then seized the facility itself, killing several people in the opening assault. They wired the plant with explosives and warned of a tragic end if anyone tried to free the captives.
What unfolded over the next days was harrowing. For hours, the gunmen moved door to door through the compound, hunting for foreigners, dragging people from hiding places, and shooting some who tried to run. More than 800 people were caught up in the crisis in all. The hostages came from across the world - Americans, Britons, Norwegians, Japanese, Filipinos, Malaysians, Romanians, and others - ordinary engineers and technicians who had come to do a job. Some made extraordinary escapes. A group hiding in the central processing area slipped out under fire and walked for miles across open desert before rescue. Others helped fellow captives flee even as the danger closed in. The militants demanded an end to the French military campaign against Islamists in northern Mali, and the release of prisoners - but the standoff was always tilting toward violence.
The Algerian government refused to negotiate. Its forces moved to retake the site, and the result was bloody and contested. At one point the militants loaded hostages into six vehicles and drove out onto the road; the convoy was attacked by the Algerian military, and survivors who escaped the burning vehicles later gave wrenching testimony to a coroner's inquest in London, describing trucks blown apart with hostages still inside. On 18 January the militants detonated a bomb at the processing plant, killing more captives, and the army stormed the site to bring the siege to an end. When it was over, at least 39 foreign hostages were dead alongside the guard Lahmar - about forty lives in total - and 29 of the militants had been killed, with three captured. A total of 685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners were freed. Several Western governments criticized Algeria for acting without consultation and for the heavy loss of life; Japan, which lost 10 of its 17 nationals, had urged Algeria to put human lives first.
It is easy to let a death toll blur into a statistic. The people lost at In Amenas were not. They were named. Carlos Estrada, a BP vice-president for North Africa who had given the company more than 18 years, died there; he was a resident of the United Kingdom. Three Americans were killed - Frederick Buttacio of Katy, Texas; Victor Lynn Lovelady of Nederland, Texas; and Gordon Lee Rowan of Sumpter, Oregon. Four Norwegians, three Britons, five Japanese among the dead and more besides - quality inspectors, engineers, fathers and husbands whose families learned of their fate through embassies and dental records. The attack was claimed by a brigade under Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the veteran al-Qaeda-linked commander, with the assault on the plant led by his lieutenant Abdul al-Nigeri, who died in the fighting. In the years afterward, BP and Statoil faced lawsuits over whether they had protected their staff; the plant was rebuilt, fortified, and returned to full production by September 2014. And among the families left behind, the hardest grievances belonged to relatives of agency workers who, in countries with little social safety net, lost both their loved ones and the income those workers had provided. The gas still flows from Tigantourine. The names should not be allowed to fade with it.
The Tigantourine gas plant lies at roughly 27.93 degrees north, 9.11 degrees east, about 40 km southwest of the town of In Amenas in Illizi Province, far eastern Algeria, near the Libyan border. From the air the area reads as flat, pale Saharan desert broken by the industrial geometry of the gas facility - processing trains, flare stacks, and the dark scar of access roads - set in otherwise empty terrain. The nearest airfield is In Amenas Airport (ICAO DAUZ), which serves the gas fields; Illizi Takhamalt Airport (DAAP) lies to the southwest. This is remote, security-sensitive industrial airspace over open Sahara: expect excellent visibility most of the year, extreme daytime heat, and the hazard of blowing dust. The site is an active, heavily protected facility rather than a tourist destination; it is noted here as the place where the January 2013 siege occurred. A high viewing altitude is appropriate, keeping clear of the operational area.