Algeria hostage crisis comes to an end, dozens killed in final assault

Algerian troops stormed a remote gas plant Saturday to end a hostage crisis that killed 23 foreigners and Algerians, seven of them executed by their Islamist captors in a final military assault.

Twenty-one hostages died during the siege that began when the Al-Qaeda-linked gunmen attacked the In Amenas gas facility deep in the Sahara desert at dawn on Wednesday, the interior ministry said.

Thirty-two kidnappers were also killed, and special forces were able to free “685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners”, it said.

Among the dead were an unknown number of foreigners – including from Britain, France, Romania and the United States – and many were still unaccounted for, including Japanese.

A Japanese engineering firm said Sunday that 10 Japanese and seven foreign workers remained unaccounted for.

JGC Corp. said it had confirmed the safety of 61 of 78 workers after Algerian troops stormed the remote gas plant Saturday to end the hostage crisis that killed 23 foreigners and Algerians.

The kidnappers led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former Al-Qaeda commander in North Africa, killed two people on a bus, a Briton and an Algerian, before taking hundreds of workers hostage when they overran the gas plant.