CLOSE The bloody three-day hostage standoff at a Sahara natural gas plant took a dramatic turn Friday as Algeria's state news service reported that nearly 100 of the 132 foreign workers kidnapped by Islamic militants had been freed. (Jan. 18) AP 
 
 Algerian state press agency says 100 of 132 foreigners have been freed 
 
 This Oct 8 satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe shows the Amenas Gas Field in Algeria. (Photo: DigitalGlobe via AP) Story Highlights Terrorists holding hostages in heart of sprawling gas facility 
 
 Algerian military raid killed several terrorists but did not end siege 
 
 U.S. plane lands in Algeria to pick up Americans, Reuters reports 
 
 An American is among at least 12 Algerians and foreigners who are known dead from the terrorist takeover at a natural gas facility in eastern Algeria, the state Algerian Press Service and U.S. officials said Friday. 
 
 Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists continued to hold as many as seven hostages, according to API. U.S. officials told the Associated Press that an American died in the hostage standoff: Texas resident Frederick Buttaccio. It is unclear how he died. 
 
 The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter, say Buttaccio's remains have been recovered and his family has been notified. 
 
 The Algerian news service, noting that its figures are "provisional," said 18 of the kidnappers were also "put out of action." 
 
 Reports of casualties -- and even the number of hostages involved -- have fluctuated wildly since more than a dozen al-Qaeda-linked terrorists attacked the remote desert facility on Wednesday, taking scores of Algerian and foreign hostages. 
 
 APS reported earlier Friday that Algerian soldiers freed 573 Algerians and nearly 100 of the 132 non-Algerians in Thursday's raid at the Ain Amenas plant, 800 miles south of Algiers, the capital. 
 
 Even with the latest report, however, it remains unclear how many foreign workers died in the raid or of what nationality, and how many escaped the facility. 
 
 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that she spoke with Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal for the third straight day for an update on the "very difficult situation" and "to underscore again that the utmost care must be taken to preserve innocent life." 
 
 Earlier Friday, leaders of the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group that took over the plant said it wanted to trade the American hostages it held for two convicted terrorists being held in U.S. jails, Mauritania's ANI news agency reported Friday. 
 
 The terrorists say they want the release of Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui and plan to release a video outlining the offer, according to the news agency, which often reports news from North African extremists. 
 
 The 74-year-old Abdel-Rahman, also known as the "Blind Sheikh," is serving a life sentence in North Carolina as the mastermind of the1993 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. 
 
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 Siddiqui, a 40-year-old scientist, was sentenced in 2010 to 86 years in U.S. prison for assault with intent to murder for shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan during her detention in 2008. 
 
 Asked to comment on hostage takers demands, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: "The United States does not negotiate with terrorists. We're obviously in consultation with the Algerians." 
 
 LIVE COVERAGE: Freed Algerian hostages debriefed 
 
 The Algerian special forces who carried out the raid killed up to 20 hostage-takers, members of an Islamic group known as Qatiba, which translates as Signers in Blood. The forces have surrounded a portion of the facility where more terrorists and some hostages remain, provincial administration sources told APS. 
 
 STORY: 'Signers in Blood' shares same goal as al-Qaeda 
 
 The military was still trying to reach a "peaceful settlement" before "neutralizing" the terrorist group, security sources told APS. 
 
 Workers at the facility included citizens of Britain, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands and the United States British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday during an address to members of parliament that efforts to free the hostages without violence are continuing. 
 
 A U.S. official said late Thursday that while some Americans escaped, other Americans remained either held or unaccounted for, the Associated Press reported. The official spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly. 
 
 Earlier Friday, the Reuters news agency, citing local sources, reported that a U.S. plane has landed in Algeria to pick up Americans caught up in the crisis. Reuters also reported that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking to security specialists in London on Friday, said "Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere." 
 
 Cameron and others complained that Algeria went ahead with its raid without alerting Western leaders they were planning an attack. 
 
 Reuters, citing an Algerian security source, is reporting that 30 hostages were killed in the assault, including several Westerners. 
 
 Members of the hostage-takers Qatiba have been in contact with the ANI news agency and told them that the raid by Algerian forces killed the ground leader of their group, Abou El Baraa. 
 
 Reuters, citing a Algerian security source, identified one one of the dead militants as Tahar Ben Cheneb, described as a "prominent commander in the region." 
 
 In all the chaos, it was not immediately clear if two militant leaders were killed, or whether the reports were referring to the same person by different names. 
 
 Qatiba was created in December by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who broke off from the terror group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to form his own operation. The kidnappers come from Algeria, Canada, Mali, Egypt, Niger and Mauritania, ANI said. 
 
 AQIM is operates out of nearby Mali, where it is fighting the Mali army and French forces to take over that country and impose an Islamic state. 
 
 A U.S. official said Thursday that while some Americans escaped from the complex, other Americans remained either held or unaccounted for. (Photo: Statoil via AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 Stephen McFaul, an Irish engineer who escaped, reported seeing Algerian forces attack Jeeps containing hostages who were being moved inside the complex, his brother told Reuters. Four vehicles blew up, and McFaul's vehicle crashed, allowing him to flee. 
 
 McFaul said the terrorsts hung explosives around the hostages' necks. 
 
 A French hostage tells Europe 1 radio that he hid under his bed for 40 hours before he was rescued by Algerian soldiers. 
 
 Alexandre Berceraux, an employee of CIS Catering at the desert gas complex, said the initial attack by militants caught everyone by surprise. 
 
 "I heard an enormous amount of gunfire. The alarm telling us to stay where we were was going off. I didn't know if it was a drill or if it was real," he told Europe 1. "Nobody expected this. The site was protected. There were soldiers in place." 
 
 The plant is jointly operated with British company BP and the Algerian state energy firm. British oil giant BP's Group Chief Executive Bob Dudley released a statement saying that "Sadly, there have been some reports of casualties, but we are still lacking any confirmed or reliable information." 
 
 White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that U.S. officials were still gathering details. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered a security review for diplomats, civilians and business across North Africa. 
 
 The Algerian military's handling of the hostage situation fits their overall approach to terrorists, says Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting, a political risk consultancy that specializes in North Africa. 
 
 "They don't negotiate with terrorists, and they don't pay ransoms," Porter said. 
 
 One of the reasons oil installations have never been attacked before is any attack would be a suicide mission, Porter said. The oil facilities are so remote and in such barren terrain, that attacks are doable, "but the Algerians would deploy helicopters and kill everybody," he said. 
 
 Escape would be impossible, but a suicide mission "becomes more feasible, which is what we saw today," Porter said. 
 
 In recent months, the United States has been courting Algeria; Clinton has twice visited Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. 
 
 Algerian leaders, however, have repeatedly warned against Western intervention in the region. Algeria warned that the NATO operation in Libya, which defeated former leader Moammar Gadhafi, would destabilize the region, and that the French intervention in Mali would do the same, Porter said. 
 
 "They (Algerians) are likely to feel vindicated, and to reject any criticism for their reaction to a domestic crisis they feel were brought about by Western actions they advised against," Porter said. 
 
 Algeria's priority is "to restore stability and deter future incidents," Porter said. 
 
 A Qatiba spokesman, pictured in a black turban and an automatic weapon in front of a jihadist flag, told Mauritanian news website Sahara Media Agency that the attack on the gas facility was in retaliation for Algeria's decision to allow French aircraft to use its airspace in its intervention in Mali. Experts doubted that, saying the attack must have been planned for a while, well before the French air assault that began only six days ago. 
 
 The United States military has a quick reaction force capable of deploying quickly to Algeria, according to a military official who declined to be named because they are not authorized to speak about the issue. The Pentagon also has "capabilities" to watch over the region, though officials would not specify whether that involves manned aircraft or drones. 
 
 Wednesday's attack began with the ambush of a bus carrying employees from the plant to the nearby airport but the attackers were driven off, according to the Algerian government, which said three vehicles of heavily armed men were involved. 
 
 "After their failed attempt, the terrorist group headed to the complex's living quarters and took a number of workers with foreign nationalities hostage," said the statement. 
 
 Al-Qaeda's influence in the poorly patrolled desert wastes of southern Algeria and northern Mali and Niger has grown. The group operates smuggling and kidnapping networks throughout the area. Militant groups that seized control of northern Mali already hold seven French hostages as well as four Algerian diplomats. 
 
 Algeria's security forces have struggled for years against Islamist extremists, and have in recent years managed to nearly snuff out violence by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (northwest Africa) around its home base in northern Algeria. In the meantime, AQIM moved its focus southward. 
 
 AQIM has made tens of millions of dollars off kidnapping in the region, abducting Algerian businessmen or political figures, and sometimes foreigners, for ransom. 
 
 Algerian leaders adopted an eradication policy against Islamist insurgents in a war that cost more than 100,000 lives. The insurgents eventually accepted amnesty and renounced violence. Remnants of the insurgency have been fighting for an Islamic state in northern Mali, Porter said. 
 
 All three AQIM factions in North Africa and the Sahara were "on a downward trend" until 2012, Porter said. The collapse of Libya, which allowed weapons from Gadhafi's vast arsenal to be seized by extremists, "helped them gain power in northern Mali and the group has transformed from 2011 and 2012," he said. 
 
 While not all the jihadi factions involved in violence across the region call themselves al-Qaeda or are officially affiliated with the group, their goals tend to be the same, Porter said. 
 
 "The goal is still spread radical Islam, attack the near enemy, attack the far enemy, create a sharia state — it's just no longer called al-Qaeda," he said. 
 
 Aaron Zelin, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that while al-Qaeda central is "probably the weakest it's ever been," the jihadist movement has adapted and has strengthened in North Africa. 
 
 "The central organization has been weakened, but the branches have gotten stronger because a lot of them are more embedded within the local milieu," he said. 
 
 In its new form, al-Qaeda and its jihadi affiliates and sympathizers are less able to launch attacks on the USA or Europe, where security is better than a decade ago, and more focused on "setting up little emirates" and threatening U.S. and Western interests in their own countries, Zelin said. 
 
 "They want to bleed the U.S. and its allies dry and exhaust them over a long period of time," he said. 
 
 Contributing: Jim Michaels; John Bacon; Michael Winter; Kim Hjelmgaard 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1042V7Z ||||| BAMAKO, Mali — The four-day hostage crisis in the Sahara reached a bloody conclusion on Saturday as the Algerian Army carried out a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing most of the remaining kidnappers and raising the total of hostages killed to at least 23, Algerian officials said. 
 
 Although the government declared an end to the militants’ siege, the authorities believed that a handful of jihadists were most likely hiding somewhere in the sprawling complex and said that troops were hunting for them. 
 
 The details of the desert standoff and the final battle for the plant remained murky on Saturday night — as did information about which hostages died and how — with even the White House suggesting that it was unclear what had happened. In a brief statement released early Saturday night the president said his administration would “remain in close touch with the government of Algeria to gain a fuller understanding of what took place.” 
 
 The British defense minister, Philip Hammond, called the loss of life “appalling and unacceptable” after reports that up to seven hostages were killed in the final hours of the hostage crisis, and he said that the leaders of the attack would be tracked down. The Algerian government said that 32 militants had been killed since Wednesday, although it cautioned that its casualty counts were provisional. 
 
 Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, who appeared with Mr. Hammond at a news conference in London, said he did not yet have reliable information about the fate of the Americans at the facility, although a senior Algerian official said two had been found “safe and sound.” 
 
 What little information trickled out was as harrowing as what had come in the days before, when some hostages who had managed to escape told of workers being forced to wear explosives. They also said that there were several summary executions and that some workers had died in the military’s initial rescue attempt. 
 
 On Saturday, Algerian officials reported that some bodies found by troops who rushed into the industrial complex were charred beyond recognition, making it difficult to distinguish between the captors and the captured. Two were assumed to be workers because they were handcuffed. 
 
 Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, said that five Britons and one British resident had died in the final rescue attempt or were unaccounted for. He said that police forces were fanning out across Britain visiting each of the families involved. 
 
 Most of the hundreds of workers at the plant, who come from about 25 countries, appear to have escaped sometime during the four days. 
 
 The Algerian government has been relatively silent since the start of the crisis, releasing few details. The government faced withering international criticism for rushing ahead with its first assault on the militants on Thursday even as governments whose citizens were trapped inside the plant pleaded for more time, fearing that rescue attempts might lead to workers dying. The Algerians responded by saying they had a better understanding of how to handle militants after fighting Islamist insurgents for years. 
 
 On Saturday, it was unclear who killed the last hostages. Initial reports from Algerian state news media said that seven workers had been executed during the army’s raid, but the senior government official and another high-level official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, later said the number killed and the cause were unknown. The early reports also said 11 militants were killed, but later information suggested that some may have blown themselves up. 
 
 One of the Algerian officials defended the latest military assault, saying the government feared the militants were about to set off explosions at the In Amenas complex. 
 
 The Algerian state oil company, Sonatrach, said that the attackers had evidently mined the facility with the intention of blowing it up and that the company was working to ensure the safety of the plant. 
 
 The government official, meanwhile, said that the militants had set fire to the plant’s control tower on Friday night and that it was later extinguished by soldiers and workers. The militants also tried to blow up a pipeline, he said, leading officials to worry about the stocks of gas at the plant. “The authorities were afraid they were going to blow up the reserves,” said the official, who believed the militants had planned all along to destroy the complex. 
 
 Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare from Paris, Elisabeth Bumiller and John F. Burns from London, Manny Fernandez and Clifford Krauss from Houston, and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.
– The Algerian hostage standoff appears to be over after four days, but the end came with more bloodshed: The government says kidnappers executed seven hostages during this morning's "final assault." That brings the death toll to at least 32 "terrorists" and 23 hostages, including one American, report AP and CNN. No details are out yet on nationalities of the latest victims. "In principle, it's over," a government official tells the New York Times. Only a "clean-up process" remains. A Turkish official says two remaining American hostages were found "safe and sound." Algeria's state news agency reports that another 11 of the al-Qaeda-linked militants were killed in the raid, but it did not say whether any remained alive. As for that "clean-up process": The militants reportedly booby-trapped the entire gas refinery with explosives, and Algerian troops had begun the painstaking task of clearing them.