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Algeria crisis ends in bloodshed

7 more foreign hostages killed; 30 remain unaccounted for

Afp
Islamists killed all seven of their remaining foreign captives yesterday before being gunned down at a gas plant in the Algerian desert, ending one of the bloodiest international hostage crises in years, state media said.
The 11 heavily armed men from a group known as "Signatories in Blood" had been holed up at the remote In Amenas complex near the Libya border since they took hundreds of workers hostage in a dawn attack on Wednesday.
Most of the hostages, including 573 Algerians and about 100 foreigners, had been freed after Algerian forces launched a rescue operation on Thursday, which was widely condemned as hasty, but some 30 remained unaccounted for.
In yesterday's final assault, "the Algerian army took out 11 terrorists, and the terrorist group killed seven foreign hostages," state television said.
It did not give the nationalities of those who died.
A security official who spoke to AFP gave the same death tolls, adding that it was believed the foreigners "were killed in retaliation".
The militants themselves said before the raid that they
had been holding seven hostages. They had given a breakdown of three Belgians, two Americans, one Japanese and a Briton, although Brussels said there was no indication any of its nationals were being held.
Security officials had put the remaining number of foreign hostages at 10.
After the assault, APS said 25-26 Algerian and foreign workers have been killed during the four-day crisis.
The final death tolls, of both foreign and Algerian hostages and of gunmen, were not yet known.
UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond confirmed the crisis was over and that lives had been lost.
At a joint news conference with his US counter-part Leon Panetta, Hammond said the loss of life was "appalling and unacceptable and we must be clear that it is the terrorists who bear sole responsibility for it".
The hostage-taking was the largest since the 2008 Mumbai attack, and the biggest by jihadists since hundreds were killed in a Moscow theatre in 2002 and at a school in the Russian town of Beslan in 2004, according to monitoring group IntelCenter.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain must prepare itself for "bad news," and that "the large majority” of Britons originally caught up in the crisis were safe, with "fewer than 10" at risk or unaccounted for.
France said that no more of its citizens were being held.
Amid what had been a virtual news blackout in Algiers, harshly criticised by local media, world leaders had taken a tough stand on the fate of the remaining hostages.
But Panetta refused to criticise Algeria.
"They are in the region, they understand the threat from terrorism... I think it's important that we continue to work with (Algiers) to develop a regional approach."
At least one American had already been confirmed dead before the final assault.
"Signatories in Blood," led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former senior al-Qaeda commander in north Africa, were demanding an end to French intervention against Islamists in neighbouring Mali, ANI reported earlier.
Belmokhtar also wanted to exchange American hostages for the blind Egyptian sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, jailed in the United States on charges of terrorist links.