Canada has asked Algeria for proof that two Canadians were among the slain captors at a desert gas plant in the North African country, an official said.
Canadian diplomats in Ottawa and Algiers were ordered to press for “access to the information the Algerians are using to identify any hostage taker as ‘Canadian,’” the Foreign Ministry official said.
“Canada summoned the Algerian ambassador to Canada to make that point directly.”
A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird added, “With regard to the identities of those involved, we have received no information on these individuals from the Algerian Government.”
The attack on the In Amenas plant, mounted by Mokhtar Belmokhtar’s Al-Qaeda linked ‘Signatories in Blood’, left 38 foreign workers dead.
Algeria’s Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said two Canadian nationals involved in the four-day siege of the gas plant in the deep Sahara desert were also killed.