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Irish hostage released amid uncertainty about the safety of other foreign hostages
An Irishman who was among a group of gas workers kidnapped in Algeria has been freed and is safe, Ireland’s foreign ministry has said.
The 36-year-old married man from west Belfast made contact with his family at about 3pm. “He has been in touch with his family. We understand that he is safe and well. He is no longer a hostage,” a ministry spokesman told Reuters.
Algerian forces launched an operation to free hostages held at a remote desert gas plant on Thursday. Details of the military operation have been difficult to confirm. Algeria’s official APS news agency said the military had freed four foreign hostages; other sources said six foreign hostages had been killed and seven were still being held.
As many as 180 Algerian hostages have managed to flee, according to local sources.
The standoff began when gunmen calling themselves the Battalion of Blood stormed the In Amenas gas field on Wednesday morning. They said they were holding 41 foreigners and demanded a halt to a French military operation against fellow al-Qaida-linked Islamist militants in neighboring Mali.
A Mauritanian news agency that has been in constant contact with kidnappers holding dozens of Western hostages in Algeria reported on Thursday that 34 of the captives had been killed in air strikes.
It was not immediately possible to confirm the report by the ANI news agency, which said 14 kidnappers had also been killed in air strikes by the Algerian armed forces, which had surrounded the remote desert gas pumping station where the kidnappers were holed up.
Qatar-based Al Jazeera television carried a similar report, citing its own sources.
ANI quoted a spokesman for the kidnappers as saying they would kill the rest of their captives if the army approached.
??Governments around the world were holding emergency meetings to respond to one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades, which sharply raised the stakes in a week-old French campaign against al Qaeda-linked rebels in the Sahara.
An Algerian security source earlier said 25 foreign hostages had escaped the besieged compound, including two Japanese.
The source told Reuters the captors had demanded safe passage out with their prisoners. Algeria has refused to negotiate with what it says is a band of about 20 fighters.
A group calling itself the “Battalion of Blood” says it seized 41 foreigners, including Americans, Japanese and Europeans, after storming the pumping station and employee barracks before dawn on Wednesday.
The attackers have demanded an end to the French military campaign in Mali, where hundreds of French paratroopers and marines are launching a ground offensive against rebels a week after Paris began firing on militants from the air
