BAMAKO, Mali — Kidnappers and at least some of their hostages were killed on Thursday as Algerian forces assaulted a heavily armed group of Islamist extremists holding dozens of captives, including Americans and other foreigners, in a remote gas field facility in the Algerian desert, the Algerian government announced.
Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An undated photo of the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign hostages on Wednesday.
In a statement on national radio, the communications minister, Mohand Saïd Oublaïd, said that many of the hostages had been freed, but he warned that the military assault was not yet complete and that some captives remained trapped inside the facility.
“The operation resulted in the neutralization of a large number of terrorists and the liberation of a considerable number of hostages,” Mr. Oublaïd said. “Unfortunately, we deplore also the death of some, as well as some who were wounded. We do not have final numbers.”
He also said “the operation is ongoing, given the complexity of the site, to liberate the rest of the hostages and those who are trapped inside.”
The announcement was the most detailed official information given by Algeria on the crisis. It began more than 24 hours earlier when Islamist militants seized the hostages at the internationally managed gas field in the Sahara near the Libyan border, in what they called retaliation for the French military intervention in neighboring Mali. The seizure of the gas field was one of the boldest abductions of foreign workers in recent years.
Unconfirmed news reports earlier on Thursday, quoting a statement reportedly from the hostage takers, said the Algerian military assault had left 35 hostages and 15 kidnappers dead. One Algerian government official called those numbers “exaggerated.”
The communications minister said the military assault force sent to end the gas-field siege had first sought a peaceful end.
“But confronted with the determination of the heavily armed terrorist group, our armed forces were forced to surround the site and fire warning shots,” he said. “In front of the stubborn refusal of these terrorists to heed these warnings and confronted with their evident desire to leave Algeria with the foreign hostages to then use them as a bargaining chip, an assault was launched this Thursday at the end of the morning.”
The minister’s announcement came as foreign governments, including the United States, were seeking clarity on the fate of their citizens trapped inside the gas-field facility. There was no sign that the Algerians had given prior notice to any of the countries whose citizens were among the hostages.
A senior American official said Pentagon aides traveling in London with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta were struggling to obtain basic information about the Algerian raid, and there were unconfirmed reports that an American Predator drone was monitoring the gas-field site.
The senior official said that perhaps seven to eight Americans were among the hostages — the first official confirmation of the number of Americans held captive — and that he did not know if any had been killed in the rescue operation.
David Cameron, the prime minister of Britain, said through a spokesman that his office had not been told ahead of time, an implicit criticism of the Algerian government. “The Algerians are aware that we would have preferred to have been consulted in advance,” the spokesman said.
Japan expressed even stronger concern, saying Algeria had not only failed to advise of the operation ahead of time, but that Japan had also asked Algeria to halt the operation because it was endangering the hostages.
“We asked Algeria to put human lives first and asked Algeria to strictly refrain,” the chief Cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as telling his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmalek Sellal, by telephone late Thursday.
The situation is “very confused,” President François Hollande of France said at a news conference in Paris and was “evolving hour by hour.” Mr. Hollande confirmed for the first time officially that French citizens were among the captives.
The kidnapping in Algeria was a retaliation for the continuing French military assault on Islamist extremists in Mali that has escalated into a much broader conflict, now enmeshing the United States and other countries with citizens held hostage. Reuters said the survivors of the Algerian assault included hostages from the United States, Belgium, Japan and Britain. The full extent of the casualties was not immediately clear.
News agencies in Algeria and neighboring Mauritania said the helicopters may have attacked when the kidnappers sought to move their hostages from one part of the installation to another.
