BAMAKO, Mali — The hostage crisis in the Algerian desert appeared to be reaching a bloody conclusion Saturday as the official Algerian news agency reported that the army had launched a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing 11 of them, but only after they had executed seven hostages.
“In principle, it’s all over,” a senior Algerian government official said from Algiers. The official said that security forces were “doing clean-up” to make sure some of the kidnappers were not hiding in the sprawling industrial complex.
Philip Hammond, the British defense secretary, said at a news conference in London that the Algerian military operation was over, but he called the loss of life since the start of the crisis “appalling and unacceptable.” United States Defense secretary Leon E. Panetta, who appeared with Mr. Hammond, said he did not yet have reliable information about the Americans at the facility, although the Algerian official said two had been found “safe and sound.”
The news agency report did not give the nationalities of those it said were executed, and it remained unclear if there were other hostages at the remote plant and whether they were alive. Earlier news reports said between 10 and dozens of hostages from several nations were in the hands of the kidnappers as of Friday.
United States officials said last week that “seven or eight” Americans had been at the In Amenas field when it was seized by the militants on Wednesday.
One American, Frederick Buttaccio, 58, of Katy, Tex., was confirmed dead on Friday, and the French government said one of its citizens, identified as Yann Desjeux, had also died before Saturday’s raid. The British government earlier said at least one Briton was killed, and an Algerian state news agency said 12 Algerians had died as of Friday.
The Algerian official insisted that no precise tally of the dead had yet been made, and that it would be difficult to establish one quickly. “There are corpses that are totally charred,” he said. “We’ve got to do identification work. It’s very difficult.” It was not immediately clear why the bodies were burned, although the Algerian press agency said the militants had set fire to part of the complex Friday night, which prompted the troops to launch their assault Saturday. Saturday’s assault on the attackers, if it swept up all the attackers, would bring to an end a four-day siege involving dozens of hostages and kidnappers that drew criticism from Western governments for the tough manner in which it was handled by the Algerian security services. Attacks on the kidnappers by the government forces have caused an unknown number of deaths among the hostages, in addition to those who were executed by the Al Qaeda-affiliated militants.
One Algerian who managed to escape told France 24 television late Friday night, that the kidnappers said “We’ve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is.” The haggard-looking Algerian, interviewed at the airport in Algiers, said the kidnappers then immediately executed five hostages. The militants who attacked the plant said it was in retaliation for French troops sweeping into Mali this month to stop an advance of Islamists south toward the capital.
The Algerian state oil company, Sonatrach, said Saturday that the attackers had evidently mined the facility with the intention of blowing it up and that the company was working to disable the mines.
Throughout the siege, precise information about the number of killed has been difficult to obtain from the remote site, with the government putting out varying figures.
The Algerians have rejected the criticism of its go-it-alone approach, toughest from the British and Japanese governments whose nationals were among those kidnapped, saying they have had years of experience dealing with terrorist attacks. The Algerian government has also denied launching an assault on the facility, saying troops were merely responding — on Thursday — to the militants’ attempts to leave the field with with hostages.
The government official acknowledged Saturday morning though that this week’s assault was of a scale and complexity the country had never experienced before.
“This was a multinational operation,” he said of the kidnappers. “These are not Algerians. They’ve come from all over, Tunisia, Egypt, Mauritania. It’s the first time we’ve handled something on this scale. This one is different, it’s of another dimension,” he said. Although some of the escaped hostages in recent days have said some of the militants were not from Algeria, it is not yet clear that none were, and the Algerian government and militants have previously said the mastermind was an Algerian who had broken away from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Nonetheless, the brazenness of the assault — dozens of Islamist fighters attacking one of the country’s most important gas-producing facilities — is likely to call into question Algeria’s much vaunted security strategy in dealing with the Islamic militants who shelter in its southern deserts, near the Mali border.
The Algerians have made a virtue out of keeping a lid on these militants, pushing them towards Mali in a strategy of modified containment, and ruthlessly stamping them out when they attempt an attack in the interior of the country. So far it has worked, and the country’s extensive oil and gas fields, an extremely important revenue source, have been protected.
That relative success had allowed Algeria to take a hands-off approach to the Islamist conquest of northern Mali in recent months, even while western governments have pleaded with it to become more directly involved in confronting the militants, who move across the hazy border between the two countries.
But now, with this week’s attack, Algeria may have to rethink its approach, analysts suggest, and engage in a more frontal strategy against the Islamists.
The senior government official appeared to acknowledge this in the interview Saturday, saying: “This has international implications. This is not just about us, it’s international.”
If the outcome represents a relative setback for Algeria, it could be viewed as a decided victory for Islamists who carried out the assault, who achieved several of their shared perennial goals: killing large numbers of westerners and disrupting states they have put on their enemies list — including Algeria.
Indeed, the militants said Friday they plan more attacks in Algeria, in a report carried on a Mauritanian news site that often carries their statements.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 19, 2013
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the nationality of a government official who said security forces were searching the gas complex. The official was Algerian, not Turkish.
