Bloody End to Algeria Hostage Crisis "The hostage crisis in the Algerian desert reached a bloody conclusion Saturday as the army carried out a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing 11 of them, but only after the militants had killed seven hostages, the official Algerian news agency reported," our colleague Adam Nositer wrote from Bamako, the Malian capital. "Western officials deplored the loss of life during the four-day siege, which Philip Hammond, the British defense secretary, called "appalling and unacceptable." Separately, Paris Bureau Chief Steven Erlanger the roots of France's intervention in Mali.