APALIT, Pampanga- Relatives of Filipino workers who were hostaged and initially reported killed during an attack last week by Islamic militants on a British-run Amanas gas facility in Algeria are holding on to strands of hope that their loved ones are among the still unnamed survivors.
This, as survivor Joseph Balmaceda told Estrella Santiago, wife of engineer Iluminado Santiago, that the latter might still be alive.
Balmaceda said he was even holding the hand of Iluminado, whom he said was the leader of Filipino workers at the gas field, after the first volley of gunshots and bombs were fired as they hid in a vehicle.
He said that after the shots died down, he told Iluminado they could already go, but that the latter already seemed unconscious.
“There were again gunshots so I left him and ran and even rolled until I reached the area of rescuers before I fainted,” he said, referring to Iluminado as “Gov”.
Balmaceda visited yesterday Santiago’s wife at Royal subdivision here to relate what happened. He and another survivor Ruben Andrada arrived the other day.
“Before I ran off, I saw Gov was unconscious but he had no wound nor blood. He might have passed out or suffered from (heart) attack,” he said, adding that the vehicle where he left his unconscious friend was not among those which were bombed by the attackers.
Mrs. Santiago said she was relieved by Balmaceda’s story. “There is chance he could still be alive,” she told Punto!, dismissing reports from Algerian sources naming her husband as among the fatalities.
“My husband could have been rescued. If he were among those burned, how come his body has not been identified yet among those burned by bombs despite the personal information I provided that could otherwise have led to his easy identification?” asked Mrs. Santiago.
Balmaceda reported, however, that another friend he identified only as Angel seemed wounded during the attack.
Mrs. Santiago said, however, that when she first learned about what happened in the gas plant where her husband worked, she prayed for a sign from her husband and that minutes later, she smelled her husband’s perfume.
Balmaceda also reported a mystical experience when he found himself floating out of his body and actually seeing his body after he lost consciousness during a bomb attack.
“You may not believe this, but I actually went out of my body and when I realized I could be dying I really thought of my children and went back into my body,” he said.
DFA spokesman Raul Hernandez said 16 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were accounted for and confirmed alive during the attack in the gas plant in Algeria.
“The death of the six Filipinos was a direct result of the hostage taking incident in the area and mostly by gunshot wounds and the effects of the explosions,” Hernandez said in a press briefing.
The DFA was in the process of notifying the families of the six confirmed dead OFWs and coordinating the return of their remains following the information from the Algerian Foreign Ministry.
The team from the Philippine embassy in Tripoli met on Sunday with the Director General of Asia Pacific Affairs of the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Deraghi, who gave the list of all Filipinos at In Amenas who were rescued, confirmed dead and unaccounted for.
The Algerian government has extended condolences to the Philippine government and the victims’ families.
Hernandez said that based on recent reports to the DFA there are more than 1,780 Filipinos working in Algeria – most of them highly and semi-skilled workers in the gas fields.
