US blacklists Algerian al-Qaida breakaway faction

The United States on Wednesday blacklisted a shadowy al-Qaida breakaway faction behind the bloody siege of an Algerian gas plant. The Signatories in Blood, an armed unit founded by the one-eyed Mokhtar Belmokhtar last year when he split from Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. The group, also known as the al-Mulathamun Battalion, "claimed responsibility for the January 2013 attack against a gas facility near In Amenas, Algeria," the department said in a statement, adding that three Americans were among the 38 civilians killed in the siege. The designation bar US citizens and companies from having any dealings with the Algerian group.