Tokyo: The seven Japanese survivors of the Algerian hostage crisis, and nine of the ten dead, arrived back in a shell-shocked Japan on Friday as the prime minister spoke of the nation’s “deepest grief”.
Emotional reunions away from the glare of publicity awaited those who made it out of the In Amenas complex alive, amid a renewed national sense of the perils of doing business in resource-rich, but unstable parts of the world.
A government-owned plane with its red sun livery touched down at Haneda Airport shortly before 7:00 am (2200 GMT yesterday) in warm winter sunshine.
Airport officials used black umbrellas to shield those getting off the plane from the glare of cameras feeding blanket media coverage in a country baffled by what happened half a world away.
Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida stood alongside officials from engineering firm JGC, which employed — directly or indirectly — all Japanese caught up in the siege, bowing deeply after the coffins were brought out from the plane’s cargo hold. Three cargo trailers, each with three coffins, lined up near the plane’s tail as the assembled dignitaries laid on them bouquets of white flowers, a common offering for the deceased in Japan.
Tokyo on Thurday said it had now accounted for all ten men who had been out of contact since Islamist gunmen stormed the desert gas plant over a week ago. Dozens of foreigners were killed during a four-day standoff that ended in a bloody showdown with Algerian commandos on tomorrow, with reports of summary executions.
Japan’s body count of 10 is the highest of any nation whose citizens were caught up in the crisis in the Sahara and an unusual taste of Jihadist anger for a country that has remained far from US-led wars in the Muslim world.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, at a meeting of his senior ministers on Friday, said the nation was in mourning for those killed. “As a government, we again express our deepest condolences for the pain of the bereaved families,” he said. (AFP)