The SADC special forces training programme code-named ‘Exercise Mahombekombe’ begun in Kariba on Tuesday and will run until the 26th of next month.
Eight regional member states’ defence forces are taking part in the exercise which is part of SADC’s efforts to sharpen the forces inter-operability and strengthen its rapid intervention capacity.
Officially launching Exercise Mahombekombe at Charara Estate in Kariba, Zimbabwe National Army Commander, Lieutenant General Philip Sibanda said the joint programme helps further promote prevailing peace and enhance cooperation among SADC member states.
He noted that the conduct of the exercise is in fulfillment of Article 13 of the African Union Protocol on Peace and Security which calls for the establishment of regional stand by forces to deal with destabilising situations.
About 900 troops from participating member states are taking part in the exercise which is focusing on combat survival, anti-hijack and anti-terrorism.
France’s intelligence chief has questioned NATO’s claims of Russia preparing to attack Ukraine as their agents failed to spot any activities signaling this – either before or after the crisis began.
A statement by the chief of France’s military intelligence, General Christophe Gomart, was published on the National Assembly’s website.
“NATO announced that the Russians were about to invade Ukraine. But, according to French intelligence, there is nothing to corroborate this hypothesis – we determined that the Russians were deploying neither command posts nor logistical facilities, including field hospitals, needed for a military incursion,” General Gomart told a parliamentary hearing.
NATO’s top brass has been incanting mantras about a “Russian invasion” ever since the crisis in Ukraine began a year ago. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, as well as his predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen, have lashed at Russia on numerous occasions, claiming that the Russian military is present on the ground in Ukraine, but failing to provide evidence supporting these claims.
“Our conclusion eventually proved correct because even if some Russian soldiers had indeed been seen on the Ukrainian side of the border, it was just a ploy, meant to bring pressure to bear on President Poroshenko, rather than an attempt to invade Ukraine,” General Gomart said.
The French intelligence chief’s remarks came in the context of France’s role in NATO. Gomart noted that at the moment the alliance is dominated by US intelligence, while France’s intelligence is taken not taken into consideration so much.
“France will not be fooled. France has its own sources of information and we are aware what the explanation for the crisis in Ukraine is,” Philippe Migault, expert on Ukraine from the University of International and Strategic Relations, said.
Meanwhile an American RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft was buzzed by a Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet over the Baltic Sea near Russia’s Kaliningrad Region, according to the Pentagon.
Major-General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that the interception was launched after “Russian air defense radars spotted an unidentified air target over the Baltic Sea making steady progress toward the national border.” The aircraft had its transponder turned off, Konashenkov said.
The head of Russia’s Upper House Committee for Foreign Relations, Konstantin Kosachev, called on to NATO to stop their “hysterics” over flights by the Russian Air Force, “presenting them as aggression and demonizing Russia.”
“In connection with the incident over the Baltic one should keep in mind that Russia is a Baltic country, whereas the US is not,” Kosachev said.
Frants Klintsevich, of the United Russia party, said the report showed US intelligence has been working to fulfill a political order.
Meanwhile, on Friday five Northern European states, non-NATO Finland and Sweden included, signed a declaration on the expansion of military cooperation to counter “Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
Since Finland and Sweden intend to interact with NATO on a matching contribution basis, which might indicate a desire to join the alliance, Moscow will view this declaration as an act of aggression, Norwegian defense analyst Janne Haaland Matlary warned.
“Finland and Sweden have also decided to keep their exercises to NATO standards, which implies a step on the way toward NATO. Today, there are no political grounds for them to join NATO, public opinion is not frightened enough, and referendums will be required. But what is happening now still looks like a preparation for membership,” Matlary told Aftenposten newspaper on Friday.
Germany’s Federal Security Council has approved the export of a fifth submarine to Israel.
It’s the penultimate submarine promised to Israel by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and will be handed over by the company Thyssen Krupp.
Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper revealed the approval, citing the Federal Security Council’s report to the parliamentary Economics Committee.
Germany’s Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) builds the new Air Independent Propulsion Dolphins and the decision to sell them has been criticized for two reasons. One, in that German taxpayers are shouldering a third of the cost.
Secondly, the vessels are reportedly capable of being equipped with nuclear weapons.
Peter Roberts is an expert in sea power and naval weapons systems at the Royal United Services Institute in London and told Sputnik News that Israel will want to produce and develop nuclear capability on the new submarines.
“That’s the long term aspiration”, says Roberts. “But does it have it right now? No.
“These are new batch of submarines that Israel is receiving which have a markedly increased capability on what they’d had previously in terms of range, covertness and ability to reach different parts of the world then they had previously been able to do.”
Roberts adds that the submarines have the capability to become nuclear armed, “but probably not right now.”
“Several hurdles have to be overcome before it can be armed with a nuclear warhead.”
He explains that the key to being able to arm the submarines with nuclear weapons is down to the delivery mechanism.
“The Israelis rely on the fact they could fire the Popeye submarine missile — a system that the Americans successfully launched in 2002. But traditionally the Israelis only keep the Harpoon anti-ship missile.”
“These are the first submarines that will be able to fire this missile, the size of the torpedo tubes allow it to be fired, they have a bigger tubes for bigger missiles.
“The submarines would have the ability to launch them [missiles] — it’s the weapon itself that is the critical part and developing that weapon and navigation system for the guidance from within a submerged submarine is a further challenge.”
Peter Roberts says it’s difficult to say whether the submarines are distinctly designed for nuclear weapons.
“The Israelis will want to add this to their golf bag of capability which will give them huge resilience in their nuclear forces — but they’re not there yet.”
According to an article written by Anthony Bellchambers for Global Research, the Dolphin Class nuclear powered submarines “that have already been converted by the Israeli navy to being armed with ICB nuclear missiles…has given the Israeli state ‘deep sea dominance’ that is now virtually irreversible.”
Adding that German Chancellor Merkel agreed to supply Israel with the vessels “without any prior consultation with the EU.”
The Department of Defence is apparently trying to reverse racial quotas in its recruitment.
The latest South African Survey by the SA Institute of Race Relations shows that the military plans to employ more whites and fewer blacks.
The defence force admits there is a shortage of white personnel but says its recruitment drives are not based on racial quotas.
The survey shows the department’s employment equity targets are changing:
The black employment target from the current 72% to 65%;
Coloured employment from 13% to 10%;
Indian employment will remain at 1%;
The target for whites will increase from 14% to 24%.
The Institute of Race Relations figures are based on information contained in the defence department’s annual report and on its own calculations.
Stats SA’s 2015 midyear population estimates show that blacks represent 80% of the population, coloureds 8.8%, whites 8.2% and Indians 2.4%.
The research shows that there are huge numbers of vacancies in the military’s land and air defence, medical, and defence intelligence services.
The military currently has 57141 black, 10991 white, 10099 coloured and 916 Indian members.
SA National Defence Union national secretary Pikkie Greeff said the military found itself in this position because “when they started awarding exit packages they let go too many of the racial groupings that they now want to increase”.
Defence Department spokesman Siphiwe Dlamini admitted that there was a shortage of full-time white members but denied there were plans to change racial quotas.
NATO lives in some weird fantasy world. It reminds me of the Warsaw Pact
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization poses a threat to its members by involving them in interventions based on pretty flimsy evidence, Patrick Armstrong, former political counselor at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow told RT.
The new NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has made his first policy speech.
RT: The face of NATO has changed. Is this a chance for the politics to change?
Patrick Armstrong: Let me suggest what Stoltenberg should have said if he wanted to show that NATO was seriously discussing events. He might have said, and this should have been on the agenda at the recent meeting: “Mr. Kerry, a year ago you were telling us that you were absolutely certain that the Syrian government was using chemical weapons and that we had go bomb it. Today you are now telling us that we should go bomb the people that last year we would have been supporting. Please explain, discuss.” We all saw the photos of the militia cavorting in the US embassy swimming-pool in Tripoli. “Was armed NATO’s intervention in Libya a good idea or bad idea? Discuss.” A month ago we learned that the Kosovo Liberation Army that we supported -indeed we gave the entire country to it 15 years ago – was in fact a pretty nasty, criminal organization. Discuss. In conclusion, Mr. Stoltenberg, that would seem to me that based on past practice, NATO’s interventions appears to have made things worse, have detracted from the security of its members, and were based on pretty flimsy evidence. Discuss that, Mr. General Secretary, rather than blithering on about how wonderful NATO is.
RT: Why exactly does NATO see Russia as a threat? And how is that possible when at the same time the alliance is announcing such a buildup?
PA: The latest sentiment coming out of NATO is that Russia is doing terrible things on NATO’s doorstep. And NATO’s doorstep keeps moving… Speaking as a member of the country that had a great deal to do with the creation of NATO, NATO is in fact a very great threat to the security of Canada let alone its other members and the rest of the world. It keeps getting us involved in these wars for reasons that turn out to be not as solid as we were told. Why Russia? I don’t know. Maybe NATO is about being anti-Russia.
RT: The new alliance leader claimed that NATO troops are leaving Afghanistan a more stable a secure place when statistic shows the exact opposite. Is this conscious denial of the situation?
PA: NATO lives in some weird fantasy world. It reminds me of the Warsaw Pact. At some level they must know that every word they say is a lie and yet they keep on saying that. I honestly don’t know what is going on. I supported NATO back in the days of the Cold War. But at the moment it is just this destructive like a juggernaut, this huge vehicle rolls on crushing, and smashing, and destroying.
For the past few weeks, the country’s distinct national navel-gazing has shifted to the military. It began with horror stories about the treatment of veterans at Veterans Affairs facilities across the country and has reached a crescendo in the curious case of Taliban hostage Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, exchanged for five fierce-looking Muhammadans from Afghanistan’s Jihad Central.
As to the first: Backlogs, limited services, fewer service providers, substandard treatment, filthy facilities and the ensuing fatalities – these have been features of the VA system for a long time. Pervasive, institutionalized indifference and incompetence are inherent to – and well-documented in – all centrally planned health-care systems. America’s neighbors north of the 48th parallel are forever in search of a panacea for the poxes that plague their single-payer gulag. Although the same problems are beginning to percolate across America’s health-care sector, due to Obamacare regulations and rationing, the misfortunes endured by the military have been elevated above the misery of the multitudes.
We fret and worry over the fate of the 9.3 million veterans who are enrolled in VA health care. Nary is a word said about the consequences of The Affordable Care Act (ACA) to ordinary, elderly Americans – 40 million of whom rely on Medicare. Why so? The military is one powerful interest group. It has formidable cheerleaders among the legislative and the chattering rabble. Even the weakest links in the military-industrial-complex, as the grunts who do the fighting surely are, wield almost as much political clout as the illegal-alien lobby, and are certainly mightier than advocates for the aged.
As the mantra goes, soldiers fighting phantoms in far-flung destinations are “fighting for us, suffering for us, sacrificing for us,” and deserve better than us.
Not that you’d know it, but death panels by any other name are the lot of non-VA patients aged 65 and older. In compliance with ACA-mandated rationing, government planners plan on penalizing hospitals that suffer from an administrative condition the technocrats have termed “excess readmissions.” Deconstructed, this Orwellian doublespeak means the following: Say a lady aged 84 is admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. Months later, she is seen at the same facility for a re-occurrence. Given her age, she will likely be readmitted in the future. To avoid Medicare penalties ordered by the ACA for admitting grandma too often, staff now place sickly repeat offenders on what is called (truly) a “frequent flyer list.”
The goal: Keep grandma out even if it kills her.
Grandma may pay with her life for the benefit of sectional interests: 30 million uninsured Americans, including millions of illegal aliens, for whose benefit Obama’s $2 trillion ACA was intended. But who cares? In the mass of competing interests that is America, grandma is never as glamorous as the illegal alien or the grunt – who will often confess, as did Army Sgt. Bergdahl, to having joined the military so as to travel the world, experience different cultures and help peoples more exotic than his own.
At the center of the Bowe Bergdahl contretemps – a story that grows in the telling – was a passion to “learn about other cultures.” This motivated him to join the army. Poor Pashtuns are certainly more interesting than the generic granny from the Midwest. Our soldiers, after all, are groomed as “citizens of the world.” “We pay their wages,” this column ventured in “The International Highway to Hell,” “but their hearts belong in faraway exotic places with which Main Street USA can hardly hope to compete” for their affections.
There’s a problem with the American military’s sentimental flirtation with internationalism: The Constitution these men and women swear to obey brooks none of this stuff!
Who, then, grooms this army of avowed internationalists? Aided by the military’s upper echelons, Uncle Sam does. Commanded constitutionally by the commander in chief, the military does the government’s bidding. Although limited-government advocates refuse to consider the military as a division of Leviathan, it is just that. As was further argued in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program,” “The military works like government, is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while exempting the military mammoth.”
Better still, if the military is government – and it is – fanatical militarism is a facet of statism. And if the military is government – and it is – then the missions on which the government sends the military must be questioned. An equally distinctive characteristic of the current military statism is to extend the worship of The Man in Uniform to His Mission. We worship the men and women in uniform and their mission without question.
Conservatives question government programs. War is a government program. If they hope to retain a modicum of philosophical integrity, conservatives will have to include a critique of the state’s warfare machine in their case against its welfare apparatus.
The blanket chant – “thank you for your service; thank you for fighting for our freedoms” – is the hallmark of a propagandized people in the grip of fanatical militarism. Even the most irrational person has to recognize how tentative are the ties between “helping” toothless Pashtuns to be more like Americans and protecting Americans like granny.
A retired Army general is alarmed by the high number of senior officers in the U.S. military who have been fired under the Obama administration, and he is calling for the “forced resignations” of President Obama, other administration officials and the leadership of Congress for the direction they’re taking the nation.
The systematic political purge of hundreds of senior military officers in the U.S. military is now in full swing.
Vallely says the number of senior officers in the U.S. military who have been fired under the Obama administration, is now estimated at one officer per week. Indeed, Vallely has been very outspoken to what he calls a “purge” of the U.S. military by the Obama administration — with a stunning nine generals and flag officers relieved of duty this year alone.
“He [Obama] is intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”
J.D. Gordon, a retired Navy commander and a former Pentagon spokesman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, says the Obama administration is rushing to unload senior officers whom he believes have become “political pawns” dismissed for questionable reasons.
WND has been reporting on the surge of firings, suspensions and dismissals, for which Vallely has assigned a good portion of the blame to Obama’s close adviser, Valerie Jarrett. Rampant “political correctness” due to her influence, Vallely tells WND, is now permeating the military and negatively affecting everyone from top generals to the ranks of the enlisted.
According to Vallely, Obama is “intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing the U.S. as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”
Vallely equated the current treatment of U.S. senior military officers watching over what is said and done among mid-level officers and enlisted ranks to that of the “political commissars from the Communist era.”
He also told WND that the White House won’t investigate its own officials, but finds it easy to fire military commanders “who have given their lives for their country.”
In his capacity as chairman of the organization Stand Up America, Vallely issued what he termed a “National Call to Action” to force the resignations of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Vallely, formerly the deputy commanding general of Pacific Command, said the current crop of leaders must be forced to resign by the “demand resignation” process, which he explained requires massive grass-roots protests and social networking. As an example, he cited the public and media pressure that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Impeachment, Vallely said, is not a viable option because of “partisan politics.”
“Our federal government continues down the path of destroying America,” he said. “Americans must now stand up and put America back on the right track.”
In issuing his national call to action, Vallely said the federal government has not subsided in “sucking the oxygen” out of America.
“And we call to action all branches of government to do your constitutional duties and not be led astray in the cultural and moral decay of America. We have witnessed far too many lies,” he said, as well as “deception and the corruption of the republic.”
Vallely reminds Americans that the Declaration of Independence itself states that whenever “any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem more likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”
Vallely said the nation he long defended is self-destructing “before our very eyes,” because of “our inept and incompetent leadership in Washington.”
“The battle is on,” he added, “and we shall not retreat.”
Vallely, who has also served as a Fox News military analyst, claimed the Obama administration and leadership of Congress have been leading the nation down a road of “progressive socialism.”
He said conditions today are approaching those of the time of the inaugural address of President Abraham Lincoln, who said at the time that people have a “right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one.”
“Shake off,” said Vallely, “means replacing government leaders.” He argued America today bears “many similarities to the fall of Rome.” America, he added, is not immune to collapse or even revolution, which he notes “has happened many times in history. … External and internal threats could precipitate this as well as any financial collapse.”
Vallely added that “politics as usual will not be effective or sufficient enough to turn the country around.”
“We are in a war for America,” he told WND, adding that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Dr. Ben Carson, the noted brain surgeon and author of “America the Beautiful” and other bestselling books have made similar observations.
Americans have had enough, he said, and the Obama White House and identifiable members of Congress “must now depart from a progressive socialist and treasonous death march and bankrupting the country beyond expectations.”
Retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, who was a founding member of Delta Force and later deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under President George W. Bush, tells WND it is worrying that four-star generals are being retired at the rate that has occurred under Obama.
“Over the past three years, it is unprecedented for the number of four-star generals to be relieved of duty, and not necessarily relieved for cause,” Boykin said. “I believe there is a purging of the military. The problem is worse than we have ever seen.” – wealthydebates.com
France said Thursday it was closing down a 1,000-strong infantry regiment based in Germany that is part of a highly symbolic Franco-German brigade, a move Berlin reacted to with “regret”.
The brigade was set up in 1989 by then French president Francois Mitterrand and German chancellor Helmut Kohl to increase military cooperation between the two former World War II-era foes.
The French defence ministry said in a statement that it would be shutting down the 110th Infantry Regiment based in the southwestern German town of Donaueschingen in 2014.
The regiment groups together 850 soldiers and 150 civilians, and the ministry said the decision was part of “difficult choices” needed as France cuts its military budget to reduce its state deficit.
But it reaffirmed “France’s full commitment” to the brigade, which will be left with around 4,000 soldiers based in both countries after the regiment closure.
German Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere expressed “regret” at the decision, saying in a statement that the regiment “contributed with success for many years to Franco-German friendship”.
After the dissolution, France will still have 500 troops in Germany, about the same number of German troops that are stationed in France.
The rest of the brigade is made up of French soldiers based in France and German military based in Germany.
The brigade is highly symbolic in nature as it is difficult for both countries to jointly deploy soldiers to hotspots, given the different rules of engagement that govern both armies.
Soldiers from the brigade have nevertheless been sent to Afghanistan and Kosovo in the past. – AFP
At Dummies.com you can learn how to “refresh a computer system.” It is hardly a super-specialized IT job.
“Refreshing computer systems” for the Navy Marine Corps’ Intranet network was the job description of the Washington Navy Yard killer, Aaron Alexis. Alexis, who gunned down 12 military contractors in the capital, on Sept. 16, was not an irreplaceable cog in the US military-industrial complex. Given his checkered record, Alexis ought to have been a liability to any organization.
Nevertheless, the former Navy reservist would have been coveted by military contractors for his prized possession: the secret military security clearance and common-access card (CAC), courtesy of the U.S. government.
Access is invaluable. If you’re cleared to work on military installations, you’re gold to contractors – who are themselves cogs in the corrupt military juggernaut.
A government grant of privilege, not his skills, turned a mass murderer in the making into an asset to The Experts Inc., for which Alexis worked.
Unburdened by brains, liberals are demanding to know “why was Alexis able to buy guns?” Again, ask the government. Gun sellers must use the FBI-run National Instant Criminal Background Check System for background checks on customers. Sharpshooters Small Arms Range, from which Alexis bought the Remington 870 shotgun used in the crime, was in compliance. The shop checked Alexis out with the feds. The government gave them the go-ahead.
Equally compromised, Republican Sen. Susan Collins was prompted to “question the kind of vetting contractors do.” Ask the government you serve, Susan, for it, not the contractors, conducts background checks.
And for government officials, no infraction committed by Alexis was too egregious to ignore.
Even stranger is the discrepancy between the killer’s performance during his Navy service and the glowing evaluations and awards he received from his superiors. If anything, top brass’s outsized ambition for Alexis incriminates them, not him.
“A valuable asset to the command” and to “any civilian organization.” In possession of “unlimited potential.” In the category of “must promote”: These are just some of the superlatives Alexis’ superiors deployed in plotting what was supposed to be his meteoric rise through the ranks.
All despite the fact that Alexis “had eight instances of misconduct in the Navy.” As reported by CNN’s Brian Todd, “Police records say he had three arrests between 2004 and 2010,” two for “gun-related offenses.” “A private firm does background checks on civilian contractors with the government’s Office of Personnel Management. OPM checks the information and then passes it on to the Department of Defense. There is one office in DOD that determines whether someone gets the kind of security clearance Alexis had.”
Aside from this office, Alexis would have been scrutinized by layers of military security; among these the Department of the Navy’s Central Adjudication Facility (DONCAF) and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).
Not only is it preposterous to float the idea that the point people at OPM, DOD, DONCAF or NCIS “dropped the ball” (as media are framing it) – the truth is almost entirely the opposite.
Intuitively, we all know why Alexis was being groomed for great things, despite grave lapses in judgment; why, he was praised in exuberant language and honorably discharged, in 2011, for dishonorable conduct. How elastic are military morals? No less an authority than the aforementioned rear admiral characterized Alexis’ indiscretions as “fairly mild,” while conceding that this was “no stellar sailor.”
The same military honor system worked wonders for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadi who committed fratricide at Fort Hood.
The military minded not a bit that Hasan breezed about the base in his jihadi jumpsuit. If anything, his superiors encouraged his “areas of interest” – proselytizing for Islam. Hasan’s devotional zeal Army psychiatrists dismissed as merely “different.” The same great military put a positive spin on the psychiatrist’s substandard professional performance and felt no qualms about unleashing him on vulnerable veterans. (A mother whose son was left to the mercies of the major attested that he was scary, inappropriate and without empathy.)
Like Aaron Alexis – who was allowed to retain a secret security clearance issued in 2007 and valid until 2017 – no amount of trouble Hasan got into undermined his own gold-embossed security clearance, employment status, rank and six-figure salary.
None of this should come as a surprise. The military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government and sports the same inherent malignancies and perverse incentives of government, down to the racial-spoils system.
Military top dogs and their loyal political lieutenants should have been tried with Nidal Malik Hasan, and they should stand in the dock for Aaron Alexis.
French troops fought Islamist rebels in Mali while in neighbouring Algeria Al-Qaeda-linked fighters killed two people, took more than 40 foreign hostages and called for an end to France’s “crusade”.
Chad meanwhile announced it would be sending 2,000 soldiers to fight in Mali.
After days of air strikes on Islamist positions in northern Mali, controlled by the rebels since April, French and Malian ground forces battled the insurgents in the central towns of Diabaly and Konna.
But the assault on a gas field over the border in Algeria dramatically raised the stakes.
Islamists said they were holding 41 foreign hostages, including seven Americans, after their attack on the In Amenas gas field in the east of the country.
A group calling itself “Signatories for Blood” claimed the action in a post to the Mauritanian website Alakhbar.
The attack was in reprisal for “the crusade being waged by French forces in Mali” and for Algerian’s cooperation, it said, calling for an end to the operation.
Algerian Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia said that one Briton and an Algerian had been killed in the attack, while another six people — a Briton, a Norwegian a Scot and three Algerians — had been wounded.
Other reports said the hostages included Japanese, Malaysian, Norwegian and Filipino nationals. Dublin confirmed the kidnapping of an Irish national while the US State Department said several of its nationals were being held.
The attackers had also demanded the release of 100 Islamists held in Algeria in exchange for their hostages, a worker at the gas field site told AFP.
The attack came less than a week after France launched its air strikes on Islamists in northern Mali on January 11 and just days after Algeria opened its airspace to French fighter jets engaged in the mission.
Jointly operated by British oil giant BP, Norway’s Statoil and state-run Algerian energy firm Sonatrach, the gas field is located 1,300 kilometres (810 miles) southeast of Algiers, close to the Libyan border.
On the ground in central Mali, French troops engaged Islamist fighters in Diabaly, a town seized two days earlier by fighters led by Algerian Abou Zeid, one of the leaders of AQIM.
“The special forces are currently in Diabaly, in close-quarter combat with the Islamists. The Malian army is also in place,” a Malian security source said on condition of anonymity.
There were also clashes near Konna, the central town Islamists seized last week, prompting the French intervention, security sources said.
The French military said it had secured a strategic bridge on the Niger river near the town of Markala, south of Diabaly, blocking a key route to Bamako.
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the western zone around Diabaly was home to “the toughest, most fanatical and best-organised groups. It’s under way there but it’s difficult”.
— ICC launches Mali war crimes probe —
The International Criminal Court said it had launched a warcrimes probe Wednesday, as rights groups and military sources denounced the Islamists’ use of child soldiers and use of civilians as human shields.
“Different armed groups have caused havoc and human suffering through a range of alleged acts of extreme violence,” chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement.
“I have determined that some of these deeds of brutality and destruction may constitute war crimes.”
Chad announced Wednesday it would send 2,000 soldiers to Mali, a significant boost to the African forces gathering there.
“We intend to send an infantry regiment and two support battalions, which comes to around 2,000 men,” Moussa Faki Mahamat told Radio France Internationale. They would work closely with the Malian army and the multinational West African force taking shape, he added.
Nigeria will command the UN-approved 3,300-strong multinational African intervention force and has promised 900 troops. Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, Senegal, Guinea and Ghana have also promised troops.
Some 2,000 men will arrive within the next 10 days, according to a report from a meeting of regional army chiefs seen by AFP.
Ivory Coast President and ECOWAS regional bloc chairman Alassane Ouattara called for all European countries to lend support to the operation after a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany.
Germany has already pledged two transport planes and Italy logistical support.
France says it will ultimately send 2,500 troops, pitted against what are thought to be around 1,300 Islamic fighters.
Mali has been effectively split in two since April 2012, when Islamists took advantage of a military coup in Bamako and an offensive launched by Tuareg separatists in the north to seize half the country.
The UN and aid agencies report some 370,000 Malians have been displaced by the fighting. – AFP
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