Nearly 50 hostages, kidnappers killed in Algeria airstrikes

Some 34 Westerners and 15 kidnappers have been reportedly killed after the Algerian Army conducted air raids on the African country’s In Amenas gas facilities.

Mauritania’s news agency (ANI) said the attack came as kidnappers were trying to move their hostages in vehicles to a new location.

The so-called al-Qaeda-linked militants in Algeria had earlier claimed to be holding 41 foreign employees of the desert gas complex hostage at the site, but had suggested that they were ready to negotiate if the army withdrew from the area.

ANI cited the spokesman for the hostage-takers as saying that their leader Abu al Baraa had also been killed in the attack. The kidnapper, talking by telephone from inside the facility, warned that the rest of the hostages would also be killed, if the Algerian Army approached the site.

This is while local officials announced earlier on Thursday that 30 Algerians and 15 foreign nationals had managed to escape their kidnappers.

Kidnappers said their hostage taking is a reprisal for France’s intervention in Mali’s internal affairs and demanded an immediate end to the military offensive.

On January 11, France launched a military intervention in Mali under the pretext of halting the advance of the militants in the African country.

Four days later, France announced that it would more than triple the number of its soldiers in Mali from 800 to 2,500. French troops launched their first ground attack against rebel forces on January 16.

On Wednesday, two people, including a British national, reportedly died in an attack conducted by gunmen in three vehicles on a bus carrying foreign gas workers near the In Amenas gas field, west of the Libyan border.

The rebel forces fighting in Mali say they carried out the attack to avenge Algeria’s support for the French-led military operation in Mali.