Gas plant siege death toll hits 81 
and likely to rise

Twenty-three hostages, including three Britons, along with 32 of the militants involved in the siege at the BP gas plant at In Amenas, were confirmed dead yesterday.

However, Algerian bomb squads searching the remote complex for booby-trap devices left by the terrorists were reported to have found 25 more bodies yesterday.

At least three more British nationals and another UK resident were feared to be among the dead not yet accounted for.

It was also confirmed last night that a wounded Romanian, who had been brought home, died, raising the overall death toll to at least 81.

Last night BP said four of its employees from the joint venture gas plant were missing.

Foreign Secretary William Hague, who confirmed that 22 British survivors had been flown back to the UK, branded the terrorists “cold-blooded murderers” and said reports they had executed seven of their hostages before the final battle could well be true.

He also revealed fears the remaining militants had been about to blow up the whole plant were among the reasons the Algerians launched the “final assault” that ended the siege.

“Certainly, the Algerians believed that the lives of the hostages were always in imminent danger, that the terrorists were planning to blow up the entire installation. This is one of the reasons why they acted as they did,” he said.

“They decided, as a sovereign country, that was something on their soil that they would deal with and they needed to deal with urgently.”

The Algerian interior ministry insisted the troops had no choice but to intervene.

“To avoid a bloody turn of events in response to the extreme danger of the situation, the army’s special forces launched an intervention with efficiency and professionalism to neutralise the terrorist groups that were first trying to flee with the hostages and then blow up the gas facilities,” it said in a statement.

The crisis began on Wednesday when militants attacked two buses carrying foreign workers to the desert site in south-eastern Algeria. The terrorists then took Algerians and foreign workers hostage at the complex, which was quickly surrounded by the Algerian army.

Algerian forces attacked on Thursday, as militants tried to move some of their captives from the facility.

Responsibility for the siege has been claimed by jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who sent a video to a Mauritanian-based news website in which he said one of his cells, known as “Those Who Sign In Blood”, was behind the attack.

In the video, which was said to have been recorded while the siege was still going on and was not posted on the Sahara Media website, he offered to negotiate with Algeria and the West if they halted the bombing of Muslims in Mali.

Despite the heavy loss of life, Prime Minister David Cameron refused to criticise the hardline tactics of the Algerian government, which from the start ruled out negotiation with the terrorists.

“The responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched these vicious and cowardly attacks,” he said.

“When you are dealing with a terrorist incident on this scale with up to 30 terrorists it is extremely difficult to respond and get this right in every respect.”

As the Prime Minister warned the incident could signal the start of “decades” of struggle with terrorism in north Africa, Mr Hague stressed Britain would not be sucked into a new military conflict.

“The primary way of operating has to be through the countries of the region,” he told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.