Algeria’s state news agency APS said last night that the military operation to free hostages at a remote desert gas facility had ended, quoting an unnamed official source who gave no further details.
Algeria’s government spokesman confirmed some hostages were killed in a continuing military operation at a desert gas plant yesterday but said troops had been forced to act to free them due to the “diehard” attitude of their captors.
In the first official comments by the government on the day’s events, Communication Minister Mohamed Said was quoted as telling state news agency APS that many militants had been killed.
He acknowledged there had been “several deaths and injuries” among the hostages, but insisted Algeria, which fought a bloody war against Islamists through the 1990s, would not negotiate.
“We say that in the face of terrorism, yesterday as today as tomorrow, there will be no negotiation, no blackmail, no respite in the struggle against terrorism,” APS quoted Said as saying.
Adding that Algerian forces had done all they could to ensure the hostages’ survival and bring the siege to a successful conclusion, he blamed “the diehard attitude of the terrorists” for forcing the military to launch its operation.
Western leaders whose citizens were among the hostages, including British Prime Minister David Cameron, said they were told of the assault only after it started. He told Britons to prepare for “bad news” and an aide said Cameron would have preferred to have been consulted before the raid began.
Said said the militants’ goals had been to destabilise Algeria and draw it in to the civil war in Mali. The guerrillas had demanded that France stop its offensive against Mali’s Islamist rebels and that Algerian withdraw its cooperation with the French operation.
Meanwhile Prime Minister David Cameron postponed yesterday a much-anticipated speech on Britain’s future role in the European Union because of the hostage crisis which involved British nationals.
A sombre-looking Cameron warned people to expect “bad news” after Algerian forces launched an operation to free the hostages from Islamist militants, saying one Briton had already been killed when the site was stormed on Wednesday.
The gravity of the situation prompted Cameron to call off what had been dubbed a career-defining speech on Europe which he had been due to make today in Amsterdam. The address had been long awaited by Britons and lawmakers at home, as well as by officials and politicians across Europe.
“Due to events in Algeria, Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech in the Netherlands tomorrow has been postponed,” his office said in a statement yesterday. The new date and would be announced in due course, it added.
A spokesman for Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who had been due to meet Cameron in The Hague before his cancelled speech, said he “fully understood” the decision, according to local news agency ANP.
Algerian sources said earlier 25 foreign hostages escaped and six were killed in a battle with militants demanding a halt to a French military operation against fellow al- Qaeda linked Islamist fighters in neighbouring Mali.