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 ||||| Algeria's military launched a raid Thursday to free about 40 foreigners held by militants at a remote natural-gas complex—leaving some hostages dead, surprising and angering several governments and putting leaders across the world at a loss to determine the fate of their citizens. 
 
 The U.S., U.K. and Japan, whose nationals were among those held, said they had urged the Algerians not to resort to force to free the hostages, who were taken Wednesday by militants with suspected ties to al Qaeda's regional affiliate. The U.S. and U.K. received no warning that the raid was beginning, officials from the countries said. 
 
 "Before the raid began, we urged the Algerians to be cautious and strongly encouraged them to make the safety of the hostages their top priority," an Obama administration official told The Wall Street Journal. 
 
 Some foreign hostages were killed when forces raided the southeast Algerian natural-gas facility, called In Amenas, an Algerian government official confirmed. He didn't elaborate. Algerian officials have told their American and European counterparts that news reports of the number of hostages killed at the site were vastly exaggerated, saying the number was likely close to 11 or 12, according to U.S. and Western officials. 
 
 The Algerian official said only that at least four engineers had been freed. An Irish hostage is safe and has made contact with his family, the Irish government said. 
 
 By late Thursday, with details sparse and often contradictory, most governments with citizens at the site said they were unable to offer casualty numbers or account for their missing. 
 
 U.S. officials said they believe as many as eight Americans were among the hostages. But officials have so far been unable to independently corroborate how many were killed in the raid, White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "Reports of casualties are all over the map," he said. 
 
 Even if Americans aren't among the casualties, U.S. officials worried that the siege pointed to a new era of terrorist attacks on Western interests in loosely governed regions, particularly in energy-rich parts of Africa. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that the hostage crisis illustrated the growing threat of Islamic extremism in northern Africa and the need for the U.S. to coordinate closely with African and European countries to combat it. 
 
 Playing out deep in Algeria's desert, the drama focuses international attention on al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, and related groups that have spread across a vast territory that encompasses parts of Mali, Algeria, Libya and Chad. Members of AQIM claimed responsibility for Wednesday's hostage-taking, which they branded retaliation after France sent combat troops last week to support neighboring Mali in its battle against al Qaeda-backed militants. 
 
 A Briton and an Algerian were killed in Wednesday's militant attack, Algeria's Interior Ministry has said. 
 
 Nationals of nearly a dozen countries were among the hostages, with Norway, Austria and France also among those confirming that their citizens were held. The In Amenas project, a partnership between U.K.-traded BP PLC, Norway's Statoil and Algerian energy company Sonatrach, employs some 600 people, according to BP. 
 
 Thursday's action by the Algerians was its second attempt in as many days to free the hostages. 
 
 U.S. officials said Algeria didn't give the White House warning before it launched the raid. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron also hadn't been informed of the operation beforehand, according to a spokesman for Mr. Cameron, who added that the prime minister lodged a personal protest Thursday with his Algerian counterpart. 
 
 As the raid unfolded, Mr. Cameron postponed a highly anticipated speech on Britain's role in the European Union. "It is a very dangerous, a very uncertain and a very fluid situation," Mr. Cameron, speaking with British Broadcasting Corp., said of the battle. "I think we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility of bad news ahead." 
 
 Algeria defended its decision to strike at the militants. The government took all necessary measures to reach a favorable ending, the country's press agency quoted Algerian communications minister Mohammed Said as saying. But the "radicalism of terrorists" had forced the army into launching an assault, he said, according to the Algerian agency, APS. 
 
 "An important number of" the suspected militants who seized hostages at the site on Wednesday were "neutralized" by ground forces during the assault, he said. 
 
 A spokesman for the militants said his group had been trying to transport some of the hostages to a more secure location but they were hit by Algerian airstrikes, according to the Mauritanian news agency ANI. 
 
 As of late Thursday, the battle between Algerian forces and militants continued, APS reported. Contradicting an earlier report that the raid had ended in full, the agency cited local officials as saying operations had been completed only at a living quarters at the facility, where most of the hostages had been held. 
 
 But a half mile away at the site—which satellite images and company photos reveal as a vast ochre-tinged plain, flanked by sand dunes and interrupted by the occasional tall metal crane and chimney—militants holding a smaller number of hostages were being surrounded by the army, APS reported. 
 
 U.S. officials couldn't confirm whether the operation was continuing. They said the U.S. military had deployed an unmanned drone over the gas field but that the images captured by the drone didn't provide a clear picture of the status of the hostages. 
 
 The attack also highlighted worries over a geopolitical risk that could threaten oil and gas operations. The attack shut down production of In Amenas, a major field which, at full capacity, could produce nine billion cubic meters of gas a year and 50,000 to 60,000 barrels a day of liquids. 
 
 Oil prices rose $1.25 to close at $95.49 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Thursday. Italian gas company Snam SpA said Thursday it has registered a drop of more than 13% in imports of gas from a pipeline coming from Algeria since the attack early Wednesday. 
 
 Risks to foreign energy companies operating in Algeria have improved since the 1990s civil war, but remain high, particularly along Algeria's coast. In contrast, the southern desert area where most of Algeria's oil- and gas-producing facilities are located are guarded by the Algerian army and security forces. This week's large-scale attacks marks a worrying break in peaceful operations there, said experts on the region. 
 
 Representatives from Statoil and BP said the companies had decided to bring employees home from other facilities in Algeria. Statoil's CEO said three flights will bring 40 employees home Thursday night. 
 
 BP officials declined to comment on the crisis late Thursday. Earlier in the day, it said it had been informed by the U.K. and Algerian governments of the raid but that it lacked reliable information and awaited updates from authorities. 
 
 Statoil Chief Executive Helge Lund said the company couldn't comment on the status of all 17 employees who were at In Amenas field and was worried about their well-being. 
 
 Into the night, families of Statoil hostages gathered at a hotel outside of Bergen on the Norwegian west coast, waiting for news. 
 
 Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, meanwhile, said four Norwegian hostages were safe outside the In Amenas facility, while nine remained unaccounted for. 
 
 Speaking during a press conference, Mr. Stoltenberg said he was informed by Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal at midday that military action was under way. Mr. Stoltenberg said he told Mr. Sellal that hostage safety was the top priority. 
 
 "The Algerian PM told me they had tried to find a solution during the night, but had not succeeded, so they had no other choice" than to attack, he said, adding that Algeria had had to make a tough decision. 
 
 —Kjetil Malkenes Hovland, 
 
 Jay Solomon, Selina Williams, James Herron 
 
 and Jared Favole 
 
 contributed to this article. 
 
 Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1 
 
 A version of this article appeared January 18, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Rescue Raid Turns Deadly.
– A day after Algeria said it had wrapped up its mission to free hostages held by militants at a desert gas facility, the situation remains anything but wrapped up. By most accounts, dozens of hostages are still being held, with an unspecified number of Americans among them. Some developments: New demands: A news agency in Mauritania reports that the al-Qaeda-linked militants will release American hostages if the US frees two convicted terrorists, reports USA Today. The two are "blind sheik" Omar Abdel-Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and Aafia Siddiqui, a female Pakistani scientist convicted of trying to kill US soldiers and FBI agents while in custody. Revised numbers: The Algerian government's latest figures say that 132 foreign workers were originally abducted, far higher than thought, and that about 100 have since been freed, reports AP. Hostages' ordeals: Some of those freed have described having explosives strapped to their chests and witnessing the executions of other hostages, reports the New York Times.