Attack dismantles comfort of protected lives Like the denizens of an upscale gated community, the expatriate workers at In Amenas gas plant enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. To take their minds off the 52 degree summer heat and ever-present threat of sandstorms and locust swarms, they had access to a gym, an indoor swimming pool and a football pitch. Regular volleyball tournaments were held and a social committee organised frequent leisure activities. But the sense of normality was deceptive. Nestled in a remote part of the Sahara desert close to the Libyan border, an area rife with smugglers and kidnappers, the plant was a lonely outpost wholly dependent on the protection of Algerian troops at a nearby base. An attack by Islamist militants this week on the vast gas complex - and an even more deadly raid by the very security forces assigned to protect it - highlighted the facility's vulnerability. It will doubtless raise questions about the safety of economically crucial but high-risk hydrocarbon plants throughout the region. Many of the details of the attack and the subsequent raid by Algerian security forces remain unclear. But according to accounts of victims and officials, the attackers had formulated a detailed plan that overwhelmed the security forces who had the task of protecting the hundreds of employees at the facility. The drama began early on Wednesday morning with an assault on a bus carrying workers from the gas compound to a small airport five kilometres away. A shoot-out ensued, with at least one casualty, a witness told the Algerian newspaper Le Soir d'Algerie. Simultaneously, it seems, "other armed elements used a car ram, an all-terrain vehicle with reinforced steel plates, to smash the gate of the plant," the witness said. The hundreds of expatriate and Algerian workers at the gas plant woke to gunshots, screams and chaos. It was terrible because we could hear gunfire from automatic weapons. Upon entering, the terrorists had cut the electricity, the base was plunged into darkness," said the witness. Another survivor told Le Monde, the French daily, that one of the expatriate employees fled towards a small barracks of Algerian gendarmes for protection, only to find that it had already been taken over by militants dressed as soldiers. Alexandre Berceaux, a French staff member of a catering company at the site who escaped capture by hiding under his bed for 40 hours, spoke on Europe 1 radio on Friday morning and said the attack was unexpected because the base "was protected." At least three people were apparently killed at the heavily guarded compound during the militants" initial takeover. The relative ease with which the attackers took the site led to fierce recriminations against the government. Many speculated that Algerian security forces had botched their mandate to protect the facility. Nonetheless, security had been tight. Convoys of policemen bristling with automatic rifles routinely accompanied oil workers as they were bused from the local airport to the gas plant. Uniformed guards constantly checked visitors" IDs, and all cars entering the compound were searched. On that morning, however, "the Algerian security forces were not really awake," said Haitham Rabani, an independent analyst in Algiers. But there were also many militants and the militants chose their time and place very carefully. Daho Ould Kablia, interior minister, claimed in an interview with Algiers" Echourouk newspaper that no more than about 20 militants in three motor vehicles launched the attack after sneaking across the nearby Libyan border. By 10am the base was under their control and the gunfire ceased. The militants went from housing block to housing block, rounding up the compound's hundreds of employees and hustling them into a large space. They separated the foreigners from the Algerians and began strapping explosives on the bodies of some of the expatriate workers. "They entered the room, took us out and gathered us in the courtyard between the restaurant and VIP lounge," the Algerian witness was quoted as saying. Arabic-speaking hostages detected Tunisian, Libyan and Egyptian accents among the Algerian attackers. The hostages were told that the militants belonged to the Masked Brigade, and even mentioned the name of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, according to hostage accounts. "The terrorists seemed to be of different nationalities: an Egyptian, a Tunisian and Algerian," a witness told Le Monde. It was impossible to know how many terrorists there were in total. The militants appeared to know their way around the 18 square kilometre complex, leading to speculation that some of the In Amenas employees were involved in the plan. By late morning the militants decided to release some of the Algerian hostages, perhaps overwhelmed by the number of detainees or hoping they would inform Algerian security forces that some of the foreign hostages had been booby-trapped. They said they had nothing against the Algerian workers. They were mostly interested in foreigners," the witness told Le Soir d'Algerie. It was not clear what prompted the Algerian army to launch the raid late on Thursday morning that appears to have killed many more hostages than the initial takeover of the site. According to Algerian news websites, authorities had recruited local notables and tribal leaders to negotiate with the kidnappers. But at some point, for reasons that are still not clear, the militant groups began to move at least some of the hostages. Mr Rabani speculated that the plan all along had been to force Algerian security forces to stand down for fear of blowing up the gas plant and causing mass casualties. "They want to take the hostages to their hideouts," he said. They are at the Libyan border and they want to take them to the mountains far away. They put bomb jackets on knowing it is dangerous to explode anything there, and they say "give us free passage or we explode the hostages." " According to Irishman Stephen McFaul, the hostages were loaded into five vehicles and were driven away. It was then that Algerian security forces began firing on them from attack helicopters. Mr McFaul told his family in accounts published in Irish media that his was the only one of the five cars that was not struck by the Algerians, allowing him to scramble through the desert to safety. The earth-shaking sounds of warfare sparked a panic among some of the hostages, who fled. "Once the aircraft attacked, we broke the back door and came out," an Algerian hostage told state television. Among the militants killed in the army's raid were a Mauritanian national and an unidentified "emir" of an Islamist militant group, the independent Nouakchott news agency al-Akhbar reported. "We don't know what started the raid," said Mr Rabani. What I know from the Algerian security forces is that if you put exploding jackets on hostages and set bombs and then try to get out, the Algerian government will blow up everything. Because the Algerian government feels if you allow them [the militants] to get out, you have lost the war against terrorism. Additional reporting by Tom Burgis