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12 hostages killed in Algeria rescue bid: Security

Last Updated 04 May 2018, 09:11 IST

Twelve hostages and 18 kidnappers have been killed since Algeria's army launched an assault against the Islamist gunmen who seized hundreds of people at a gas complex, a security official said.

"As well as the 18 terrorists who were killed, 12 Algerian and foreign workers died," said the source yesterday, cited by Algeria's APS news agency, without giving any more details of the foreign casualties and calling it a "provisional toll."

The hostage-takers said they were still holding seven foreigners at the gas plant, part of which they blew up in order to push back Algerian forces, Mauritania's ANI news agency reported.

The hostages remaining in captivity include three Belgians, two Americans, a Japanese citizen and a Briton.

Late on Friday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said a Frenchman had been killed in the rescue operation.

Algerian special forces launched their dramatic rescue operation at midday on Thursday after the kidnappers seized the hostages at the gas plant in what they said was retaliation for Algeria's support for French air strikes in Mali.

Along with 573 Algerians, around 100 foreign hostages out of 132 seized are reported to have been freed, but some 30 are still missing.

Some of the foreign hostages who managed to escape said they had had explosives wrapped around their necks, or hid, petrified, wherever they could for nearly two days.

An Algerian employee of US firm Halliburton said the kidnappers had taken all the hostages, Algerians and foreigners, to the canteen and wired it with explosives.

The In Amenas complex, which is jointly operated by British oil giant BP, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's Sonatrach, had been put out of service to avoid the risk of explosions.

The kidnappers had said 34 captives were killed in the army's rescue bid.

But a security source described that toll as "fantasy," saying that 18 of more than 30 gunmen involved in the kidnapping had been killed.

He said the kidnappers, who claimed to have come from Niger, were heavily armed, with weapons that included machine guns, assault rifles, rocket launchers, grenades and missiles.

Earlier, security sources said the army was trying to reach a "peaceful" end to the ongoing hostage crisis, before "neutralising the terrorist group that is holed up in the plant and freeing a group of hostages still being held there."

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(Published 19 January 2013, 06:56 IST)

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