Algeria hostage crisis ends; death toll unclear

Algerian special forces completed an operation to free hostages from a natural gas complex deep in the Sahara Desert, but the army provided no information on the death toll, Algeria's state news agency reported Thursday.

Reports on the crisis have been conflicting.

A U.S. official said late Thursday that while some Americans escaped, other Americans remained either held or unaccounted for, the Associated Press reported. The official spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The attack by Algerian forces killed the leader of the Islamic terrorist group that orchestrated the hostage-taking as well as at least 14 other terrorists, according to Mauritanian news agency ANI. The kidnappers come from Algeria, Canada, Mali, Egypt, Niger and Mauritania, ANI said.

The Algerian state news agency ANP said the operation involved airstrikes and a ground operation to free the hostages, some of whom were picked up by military helicopters. Algerian TV had said that four foreign workers — two Britons and two Filipinos — died in the operation and that 600 hostages were freed.

However, a spokesman for the terror group Qatiba told a Mauritanian news outlet that Algerian military helicopters strafed the gas complex, killing 35 foreign hostages — including five Americans — and 15 militants, the Associated Press is reporting. Seven survived, including two Americans, the spokesman told AP.

Reuters, citing an Algerian security source, is reporting that 30 hostages were killed, including seven foreigners and eight Algerians. Among the foreigners were two Britons, two Japanese and one French national.

The source also says 11 militants died, including the group's leader, Tahar Ben Cheneb, described as a "prominent commander in the region."

Adding to the confusion was an earlier AP report, citing an unnamed Algerian official, that as many as 20 foreign hostages, including an unknown number of Americans, had escaped their captors.

Stephen McFaul, an Irish engineer who escaped, reported seeing Algerian forces attack Jeeps containing hostages who were being moved inside the complex, his brother told Reuters. Four vehicles blew up, and McFaul's vehicle crashed, allowing him to flee.

McFaul said the militants hung explosives around the hostages' necks.

The spokesman for Qatiba, which had earlier claimed responsibility for Wednesday's hostage-taking, said Abou El Baraa, the leader of the kidnappers, was among militants killed in the Algerian army's helicopter attack.

Qatiba, which translates as Signers in Blood, was created in December by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who broke off for unknown reasons from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

British oil giant BP's Group Chief Executive Bob Dudley released a statement saying that "Sadly, there have been some reports of casualties, but we are still lacking any confirmed or reliable information."

Britain's Foreign Office warned that "We should be under no illusion that there will be some bad and distressing news to follow from this terrorist attack."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said U.S. officials were still gathering details. "We condemn in the strongest terms a terrorist attack on BP personnel and facilities in Algeria, and we are closely monitoring the situation," he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered a security review for diplomats, civilians and business across North Africa.

The Algerian military's handling of the hostage situation fits their overall approach to terrorists, says Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting, a political risk consultancy that specializes in North Africa.

"They don't negotiate with terrorists, and they don't pay ransoms," Porter said.

One of the reasons oil installations have never been attacked before is any attack would be a suicide mission, Porter said. The oil facilities are so remote and in such barren terrain, that attacks are doable, "but the Algerians would deploy helicopters and kill everybody," he said.

Escape would be impossible, but a suicide mission "becomes more feasible, which is what we saw today," Porter said.

In recent months, the United States has been courting Algeria in an unprecedented fashion. Clinton has twice visited Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Algerian leaders, however, have repeatedly warned against Western intervention in the region. Algeria warned that the NATO operation in Libya, which defeated former leader Moammar Gadhafi, would destabilize the region, and that the French intervention in Mali would do the same, Porter said.

"They (Algerians) are likely to feel vindicated, and to reject any criticism for their reaction to a domestic crisis they feel were brought about by Western actions they advised against," Porter said.

Algeria's priority is "to restore stability and deter future incidents," Porter said.

Algerian soldiers surrounded the facility near In Amenas after kidnappers occupied it Wednesday. The militants appeared to have no escape, as Algerian troops surrounded the facility and army helicopters clattered overhead.

The Qatiba spokesman told Mauritanian news website Sahara Media Agency on Wednesday that the attack on the gas facility was in retaliation for Algeria's decision to allow French aircraft to use its airspace in its intervention in Mali. Experts say Qatiba is closely associated with or simply another name for Masked Brigades.

The spokesman, pictured in a black turban and an automatic weapon in front of a jihadist flag, said his group took 41 foreigners hostage, including Americans, French, British and Japanese nationals.

The spokesman added that there were 400 Algerian soldiers on site, but said his group had not targeted the soldiers. None of the information from the Mauritanian site could be independently verified.

The United States military has a quick reaction force capable of deploying quickly to Algeria, according to a military official who declined to be named because they are not authorized to speak about the issue. The Pentagon also has "capabilities" to watch over the region, though officials would not specify whether that involves manned aircraft or drones.

Japanese news agencies, citing unnamed government officials, said there are three Japanese hostages.

"I want to say this is unforgivable," said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was traveling from Vietnam to Thailand on Thursday as part of a Southeast Asian tour.

"Our first priority is to protect their lives," Abe said of the hostages. Japanese and U.S. officials were meeting in Tokyo to cooperate in resolving the crisis, and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera called for close exchange of information between the two governments.

Late Wednesday, Statoil said five employees — four Norwegians and a Canadian — were safe at an Algerian military camp and two of them had suffered minor injuries. It said 12 employees were unaccounted for.

Six people were wounded in the attack, including two foreigners, two police officers and two security agents, Algeria's state news agency reported.

Algeria's top security official, Interior Minister Daho Ould Kabila, said that "security forces have surrounded the area and cornered the terrorists, who are in one wing of the complex's living quarters."

"We reject all negotiations with the group," Kabila said on national television.

Hundreds of Algerians work at the plant and were taken in the attack but the state news agency reported that they have gradually been released in small groups.

Wednesday's attack began with the ambush of a bus carrying employees from the gas plant to the nearby airport but the attackers were driven off, according to the Algerian government, which said three vehicles of heavily armed men were involved.

"After their failed attempt, the terrorist group headed to the complex's living quarters and took a number of workers with foreign nationalities hostage," said the statement.

Al-Qaeda's influence in the poorly patrolled desert wastes of southern Algeria and northern Mali and Niger has grown. The group operates smuggling and kidnapping networks throughout the area. Militant groups that seized control of northern Mali already hold seven French hostages as well as four Algerian diplomats.

Algeria's security forces have struggled for years against Islamist extremists, and have in recent years managed to nearly snuff out violence by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (northwest Africa) around its home base in northern Algeria. In the meantime, AQIM moved its focus southward.

AQIM has made tens of millions of dollars off kidnapping in the region, abducting Algerian businessmen or political figures, and sometimes foreigners, for ransom.

The attack is the first time the country's hydrocarbon industry was targeted since the 1990s, Porter said.

Even during the worst of the Islamist violence in the 1990s, Algeria's hydrocarbon infrastructure was never attacked," Porter said. "This is a real departure."

Algerian leaders adopted an eradication policy against Islamist insurgents in a war that cost more than 100,000 lives. The insurgents eventually accepted amnesty and renounced violence. Remnants of the insurgency have been fighting for an Islamic state in northern Mali, Porter said.

All three AQIM factions in North Africa and the Sahara were "on a downward trend" until 2012, Porter said. The collapse of Libya, which allowed weapons from Gadhafi's vast arsenal to be seized by extremists, "helped them gain power in northern Mali and the group has transformed from 2011 and 2012," he said.

While not all the jihadi factions involved in violence across the region call themselves al-Qaeda or are officially affiliated with the group, their goals tend to be the same, Porter said.

"The goal is still spread radical Islam, attack the near enemy, attack the far enemy, create a sharia state — it's just no longer called al-Qaeda," he said.

Aaron Zelin, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that while al-Qaeda is "probably the weakest it's ever been," the jihadist movement has adapted and has strengthened in North Africa.

"The central organization has been weakened, but the branches have gotten stronger because a lot of them are more embedded within the local milieu," he said.

In its new form, al-Qaeda and its jihadi affiliates and sympathizers are less able to launch attacks on the USA or Europe, where security is better than a decade ago, and more focused on "setting up little emirates" and threatening U.S. and Western interests in their own countries, Zelin said.

"They want to bleed the U.S. and its allies dry and exhaust them over a long period of time," he said.

Contributing: Jim Michaels; John Bacon; Michael Winter; the Associated Press