Algeria ends desert siege with high death toll

Algerian forces stormed a desert gas complex, In Amenas, to free hundreds of hostages but 30, including several Westerners, were killed in the assault with at least 11 of their Islamist captors.

Western leaders whose compatriots were being held did little to disguise their irritation at being kept in the dark by Algeria before the raid and over its bloody outcome.

Some French, British and Japanese members of staff of the gas company were among the dead, an Algerian security source told Reuters.

An Irish engineer who survived said he saw four jeeps full of hostages blown up by Algerian troops whose commanders said they moved in about 30 hours after the siege began because the gunmen had demanded to be allowed to take their captives abroad.

The crisis which ended on Thursday had posed a serious dilemma for Paris and its allies as French troops attacked the hostage-takers’ al Qaeda allies in neighbouring Mali.

It left question marks over the ability of OPEC-member Algeria to protect vital energy resources and strained its relations with Western powers.

Two Japanese, two Britons and a French national were among at least seven foreigners killed, the source told Reuters.

The sources said eight dead hostages were Algerian.

The nationalities of the rest, as well as of perhaps dozens more who escaped, were unclear.

Some 600 local Algerian workers, less well guarded, survived.

Fourteen Japanese were among those still unaccounted for by the early hours of Friday, their employer said.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has cancelled part of his trip in Southeast Asia, his first overseas trip since taking office, and is considering flying home early due to the hostage crisis, Japan’s top government spokesman said on Friday.

“The action of Algerian forces was regrettable,’’ said Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, adding Tokyo had not been informed of the operation in advance.

Americans, Norwegians, Romanians and an Austrian have also been mentioned by their governments as having been captured by the militants who called themselves the “Battalion of Blood’’ and had demanded France end its week-old offensive in Mali.

The hostage saga Underlines the view of African and Western leaders that they face a multinational Islamist insurgency across the Sahara.

The anticipation of insurgencies arising from Mali prompted France to send hundreds of troops to the country last week, the official source said only two of the 11 dead militants were Algerian, including the squad’s leader.

The bodies of three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman were found, the security source said.

The group had claimed to have dozens of guerrillas on site and it was unclear whether any militants had managed to escape.

The overall commander, Algerian officials said, was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria’s bloody civil war of the 1990s.

He appears not to have been present and has now risen in stature among a host of Saharan Islamists, flush with arms and fighters from chaotic Libya, whom Western powers fear could spread violence far beyond the desert.

Algeria’s government spokesman made clear the leadership in Algiers remains implacably at odds with Islamist guerrillas who remain at large in the south years after the civil war in which some 200,000 people died.

Communication Minister Mohamed Said repeated their refusal to negotiate with hostage-takers.

“We say that in the face of terrorism, yesterday,today and tomorrow, there will be no negotiation, no blackmail, no respite in the struggle against terrorism,’’ he told APS news agency.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who warned people to prepare for bad news and who cancelled a major policy speech on Friday to deal with the situation, said through a spokesman that he would have liked Algeria to have consulted before the raid.