All Thais working in Algeria safe: govt
No Thai nationals were among the foreign workers being held hostage in Algeria by militants linked to the al-Qaeda Islamist group, senior government officials said yesterday.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said checks by the Foreign Ministry found that none of the Thai nationals working in the northern African country was among the hostages.
She said she had instructed the ministry to take special care of Thai workers in the country. “If they want to return home or move to a safer area, the Foreign Ministry will arrange it for them,” the prime minister said.
Foreign Minister Surapong Towichukchaikul said yesterday that the Thai Embassy in Paris, which handles the affairs of Thais in Algeria, had informed the ministry that no Thais were among the hostages. Thailand has no diplomatic mission in Algeria.
Surapong added, however, that the ministry would continue to follow the hostage crisis closely. The foreign minister said the employers of the Thai workers in Algeria have been asked to inform Thai officials in case of emergency.
He urged the families of Thai workers not to be overly concerned. “The ministry is ready to give full assistance,” he added.
PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP), an affiliate of Thai petroleum giant PTT, said yesterday that three of its employees work on an oil rig in the capital city, Algiers, which is almost 500 kilometres from In Amenas, where the hostage-taking took place.
All of the PTTEP employees are safe and are unaffected by the hostage crisis, said Yupawadee Walayaphet, the company’s vice president for corporate communications. She added that if the risks facing its employees increased, the company would evacuate them.
There were conflicting reports yesterday about the fate of as many as 41 foreign workers, among hundreds of hostages, held since Wednesday at a natural-gas complex near the border with Libya that is operated by London-based BP, Statoil ASA of Norway and Algeria’s Sonatrach.
An Algerian military raid on Thursday night to free hostages from at least 10 countries and wipe out their Islamist militant captors unleashed bloody chaos. The British government and US officials said yesterday that the operation was not yet over. Estimates of the number of those killed ranged wildly from four to 50.
The Algerian Army was yesterday still pursuing the militants at the gas plant and still searching for hostages at the site, British Prime Minister David Cameron was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying yesterday. He said the first stage of the military operation was complete, “but this is a large and complex site and they are still pursuing terrorists and possibly some of the hostages in other areas of the site”.
RELATED