KONNA, Mali - French forces in Mali have seized the airport and the bridge over the Niger River at the Islamist rebel-held stronghold of Gao, the French Defence Ministry said Saturday.

French and Malian forces have advanced rapidly against Islamist militant fighters holding the Saharan north of the West African state after France intervened earlier this month at the request of the Malian government.

Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Saturday the U.S. would conduct aerial refueling missions in support of France's operations there. The U.S. has already transported French troops and gear to Mali.

On Friday, al-Qaida-allied fighters were forced to pull back under relentless French air strikes and the town of Hombori, about 100miles southwest of Gao, was recaptured.

French and Malian troops have been pushing forward on either side of the Niger River, securing several farming towns recaptured over the last week.

Gao, with the other Saharan desert towns of Timbuktu and Kidal, has been occupied since last year by an Islamist alliance that includes AQIM, the north African franchise of al-Qaida.

Mali's national radio said Hombori's inhabitants turned out to cheer the government soldiers.

Western and African leaders say the U.N.-backed intervention in Mali is necessary to stop the country's north - a vast, lawless tract of desert and mountains that juts into the Sahara - from becoming a safe haven for radical Islamist jihadists seeking to launch international attacks.

A Malian officer and residents living in the area south of Gao reported Thursday that the militants had blown up a bridge at Tassiga, south of Ansongo, on the road following the Niger River down to Niger.

Two civilians were reported killed when their vehicle drove off the destroyed bridge, the same sources said. 

NBC News' Gil Aegerter contributed to this report.

Related:

Malians praise French troops: 'If they leave, I will leave'

Jihadists leave trail of destruction, brutality

Analysis: Why France is taking on Mali extremists

AP

Saeed al-Shihri, deputy leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula in a photo from undated video posted on a militant-leaning Web site in January 2009, and provided by the SITE Intelligence Group.

SANAA, Yemen — Al-Qaida's No. 2 in Yemen died in a U.S. drone attack last year in southern Yemen, the country's official news agency and a security official said Thursday.

Saeed al-Shihri, a Saudi national who fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, was wounded in a missile attack in the southern city of Saada on Oct. 28, according to SABA news agency.

The agency said that he had fallen into a coma since then. It was not clear when he actually died.

A security official said that the missile had been fired by a U.S.-operated, unmanned drone aircraft. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Yemen had previously announced al-Shihri's death in a Sept. 10 drone attack in the province of Hadramawt. A subsequent DNA test however proved that the body recovered was not that of al-Shihri.

On Oct. 22, al-Shihri denied his own death in audio message posted on Jihadi websites.

Also known by the nom de guerre Abu Sufyan al-Azdi, he denounced at the time the Yemeni government for spreading the "rumor about my death ... as though the killing of the mujahideen (holy warriors) by America is a victory to Islam and Muslims."

Al-Shihri went through Saudi Arabia's famous "rehabilitation" institutes after he returned to his home country, but then he fled to Yemen and became deputy to Nasser al-Wahishi, the leader of an al-Qaida group.

Slideshow: Life goes on in Guantanamo

John Moore / Getty Images

President Obama's one-year deadline to close the facility has long passed as shutting it down has proven complicated and controversial.

Launch slideshow

Al-Shihri's death is considered a major blow to al-Qaida's Yemen branch, known as al-Qaida in The Arabian Peninsula. Washington considers it the most dangerous of the group's offshoots.

Al-Qaida in Yemen has been linked to several attempted attacks on U.S. targets, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 bombing of an airliner over Detroit and explosives-laden parcels intercepted aboard cargo flights last year.

In 2011, a high-profile U.S. drone strike killed U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been linked to the planning and execution of several attacks targeting U.S. and Western interests, including the attempt to down a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 and the plot to bomb cargo planes in 2010.

Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, has fallen into lawlessness since the start of an uprising in 2011, when millions of Yemenis took to the streets demanding the ouster of their longtime authoritarian ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Al-Qaida militants exploited the unrest and took control of large swaths of land in the south until last spring, when the military, backed by the U.S., managed to drive hundreds of militants out of major cities and towns.

Since then, the group has carried out deadly attacks targeting mostly security and military officials, including suicide bombings that targeted military and security compounds.

Related: 

UN to investigate legality of drone killings

In Texas on Tuesday, the FBI told Erin Lovelady that her father was one of three Americans who had been killed in the terrorist assault on an Algerian gas facility last week. The news destroyed a bit of his daughter's faith.

"My whole life he always told me that good things happen to good people and that I was a good person and good things were going to happen for me," she said Tuesday.

The grief of the Lovelady family is a poignant reminder of the growing concern among U.S. counterterrorism officials that the amorphous al-Qaida-affiliated groups contesting swathes of northern Africa are increasingly coordinating their strategy with al-Qaida central in Pakistan –  the remnants of the terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden.

Victor Lovelady had gone overseas because the month-on, month-off schedule gave him more time to be with his family.

"He felt 100 percent comfortable going there and he wanted that, it was never about money, it was never about that, he was going to retire and you know ...," Erin Lovelady said, her voice trailing off.

Pat Sullivan / AP

Mike Lovelady, left, sits with niece Erin Lovelady as she wipes her tears and talks about her father Victor in Nederland, Texas, on Tuesday.

Victor Lovelady was one of at least 37 foreign hostages executed by their captors or killed in the Algerian rescue mission.  The government in Algiers, aware that Western governments were angered by what they perceived as hurried decision-making on its part, released videotape on Tuesday of kidnappers carrying out executions.

"It should have been no surprise that the Algerians were going to be aggressive," said Michael Leiter, former director of the U.S. National Counter Terrorism Center and now an NBC News counterterrorism analyst. The Algerian government  couldn't afford to have prolonged hostage crisis in the midst of their southern gas fields that are crucial to its economy, he said. 

While analysts noted that the attacks did not affect the price of natural gas, they pointed out that the price of gas has already dropped and that any instability in Algeria would make negotiating with prospective partners or financiers more problematic.

“They had to consider that," Leiter said.

Now, with the Algerian standoff ended in a bloody massacre, U.S. and other Western officials are wondering where the terrorists will strike next. They note that with the death of the three Americans in Algeria, and the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Libya, al-Qaida in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM) has suddenly become the most active of the "affiliates" of the central terrorist organization founded by bin Laden.

They point to October's video message from bin Laden’s successor, al-Qaida central leader Ayman al-Zawahri  to al-Qaida affiliates, in which he suggested that they engage in kidnappings to free prisoners held in the West, particularly Omar Abdul Rahman. Rahman, the so-called blind sheikh imprisoned in the U.S. for his role in the 1993 conspiracy to topple the World Trade Center, was one of two convicted terrorists the Algeria hostage takers demanded in return for Americans they held and later killed.

The other was Aafia Siddiqui, convicted of planning attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Mokhtar bel Mokhtar, whose Signatories in Blood group claimed responsibility for the Algerian attack, has said that his organization been in touch with al-Qaida in Pakistan and that the assault on the natural gas plant was conducted on the umbrella group’s behalf.

Although there's no indication that AQIM is planning attacks on the U.S., there is intelligence suggesting that its members have planned attacks in France. That's one reason that France decided last week to move troops and arms into Mali to stop fundamental Islamists from reaching the capital of Bamako.

On Tuesday, the U.S. took another step in helping the French. American C-17s began transporting French troops and equipment to near the front line of the fighting in Mali.    

Richard Engel is NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent. Robert Windrem is a Senior Investigative Producer.

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A Malian soldier holds a machine gun as he stands guard at the entrance of a strategic bridge over the Niger river on Jan. 22, 2013, near Markala, north of Bamako. Mali's army chief today said his French-backed forces could reclaim the northern towns of Gao and fabled Timbuktu from Islamists in a month, as the United States began airlifting French troops to Mali.

Chadian forces advanced towards the Malian border on Tuesday as an African troop deployment and a U.S. military airlift swelled international support for French operations against Islamist rebels occupying the north of Mali.

An armored column of Chadian troops, experienced in desert operations, moved north from the Niger capital Niamey on the road to Ouallam, some 60 miles from the Malian border, where Nigerien troops are already stationed.

France, which launched air strikes in Mali 11 days ago to halt a surprise Islamist offensive toward the capital Bamako, has urged a swift deployment of the planned U.N.-mandated African force to back up its 2,150 soldiers already there.

The number of French troops could be boosted to more than 3,000 in the coming days and weeks, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

The aim of the intervention is to prevent northern Mali from becoming a launchpad for international attacks by al-Qaida and its local allies in North and West Africa. Fears of this increased sharply after a hostage-taking raid by Islamist militants last week on a gas plant in Algeria.

An entry into Mali from Niger by part of the African force would widen the front of operations against the Islamist alliance in the north that groups al-Qaida's North African wing AQIM and the Malian militant groups Ansar Dine and MUJWA.

On Monday, French and Malian armored columns moved into the towns of Diabaly and Douentza in central Mali after the rebels who had seized them fled into the bush to avoid air strikes. Diabaly is only 220 miles north of Bamako, while Douentza is 500 miles away from the riverside capital.

Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou, who visited the troops at Ouallam, condemned the Islamist alliance, and an imam, or Muslim cleric, said prayers for the troops.

"We are going to war. A war imposed on us by traffickers of all kinds, an unjust war, from which the peaceful citizens of northern Mali are suffering terribly," Issoufou told the forces.

"I am confident in your burning desire for victory."

France says its troops will remain in Mali until they have completely dislodged the Islamist fighters from the north and fair elections can be held in its former colony.

In support of France, the United States has started transporting French soldiers and equipment to Mali from the Istres air base in southern France. Washington on Tuesday completed the fifth of an estimated 30 flights in an airlift expected to run for about a week.

A Reuters correspondent in Bamako saw a U.S. military cargo plane land at the international airport and offload about 40 French soldiers, jeeps, and other equipment.

Britain, Belgium, Canada and Denmark were already transporting French materiel to Mali. Benson said the United States was also working with France on intelligence issues, but declined to say if surveillance drones were being used.
 
'Everyone will fight'
France has also sent jet fighters and attack helicopters that have blasted rebel bases for more than a week, as it awaits troops from nearby African nations to deploy to the front line.

Some 1,000 African troops from the West African regional bloc ECOWAS and the central African nation of Chad have arrived, and that number is expected to top 5,000 in the coming weeks.

Military experts say the swift and effective deployment of African forces is crucial to sustain the momentum of France's air campaign and prevent Islamists from melting away into the empty desert or the rugged mountains near the Algerian border.

Niger's armed forces, which completed their training a month ago, are expected to advance toward the rebel-held north Malian city of Gao in collaboration with the Chadian troops. It was not clear when exactly they would cross the border.

Gao, the largest city of Mali's north, has been hit by French air strikes in recent days.

Niger has already sent a technical team to Mali, part of a battalion of 544 troops accompanied by French liaison officers.

Nigeria, a big oil producer, also plans to deploy some 1,200 troops in Mali and its president, Goodluck Jonathan, said they would stay there until the crisis was resolved.

Col. Oumar Kande, ECOWAS military and security adviser in Mali, told Reuters in Bamako the original plan for the U.N.-backed ECOWAS military intervention in the north was being changed to adapt to fast-evolving circumstances.

Instead of the Malian army alone playing the combat role, with ECOWAS supporting, now "everyone will fight", Kande said.

"We need to adjust to the reality on the ground."

Kande said ECOWAS was concerned about its troops having to fight a difficult counter-insurgency war in a northern Mali desert and mountain battleground the size of Texas against Islamist fighters likely to shun a head-on conventional fight.

"Given the force of the reaction from the international community, they (the rebels) are likely to adjust and begin an asymmetrical war, ambushes, strikes by small cells," he said.

"It is possible we will win back Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal in a month, but it is impossible to say how long the overall war will last."

The rebels have imposed severe Shariah law in areas they control, carrying out amputations and at least one fatal stoning, and wrecking ancient shrines sacred to moderate Sufi Muslims.

$450 million sought for African troops
International donors will be asked to finance training and support for the Malian, ECOWAS and other African troops involved in the deployment of the U.N.-backed African force AFISMA against the Islamist alliance.

Donors are to meet at a conference in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Jan. 29, and France said they would be asked to provide about $452 million (about 340 million euros).

"We estimate that the Malian forces needs will be around 120 million euros and about 220 million euros for AFISMA for a full year," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said.

Since the French started their operations earlier in January to block the jihadist thrust out of northern Mali, several thousand civilians have fled the recent fighting to neighboring states, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said. In Mauritania, 4,208 Malian refugees have arrived since Jan. 11, it said.

Niger had seen 1,300 new refugees, mainly from Menaka and Anderamboukane, while during the same period, Burkina Faso had received 1,829 new refugees, mainly Tuaregs and Songhai from the regions of Gossi, Timbuktu, Gao and Bambara Maoude.

This was on top of almost 400,000 Malians displaced since April, when an offensive by Tuareg rebels allied with Islamist fighters seized Mali's largely desolate north following a military coup in Bamako in March.

Related:

France and Mali set aside colonial past to fight new common foe

Violence in Mali, Algeria raises fresh fear of radical Islam

ALGIERS, Algeria — The U.S. State Department on Monday confirmed that three American citizens were among those killed during the hostage-taking by Islamic militants at a gas field in Algeria.

The death toll from the four-day siege deep in the Sahara has risen to at least 67, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said Monday on Algerian televsion. The number includes 38 foreign workers and 29 militants who died in the crisis which came to an end in a bloody confrontation with Algerian forces.

Five foreigners remained unaccounted for, Sellal said.

A Japanese government source said the Algerian government had informed Tokyo that nine Japanese had been killed, the highest toll among the non-Algerians working there.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Monday identified the three Americans who were killed as Victor Lynn Lovelady, Gordon Lee Rowan and Frederick Buttaccio, who had been named earlier.

"We are also aware of seven U.S. citizens who survived the attack," Nuland said. "Due to privacy considerations, we have no further information to provide.

"We will continue to work closely with the Government of Algeria to gain a fuller understanding of the terrorist attack of last week and how we can work together moving forward to combat such threats in the future," Nuland said.

'Blessed operation'
One-eyed veteran Islamist fighter Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of al-Qaida.

"We in al-Qaida announce this blessed operation," he said in a video, according to Sahara Media, a regional website. He said about 40 attackers participated in the raid, roughly matching the government's figures for fighters killed and captured.

The fighters swooped out of the desert on Wednesday and seized the In Anema plant and residential barracks nearby.

About 800 people, including some 700 Algerians and 100 foreigners, managed to escape after militants stormed.

Algerian troops launched their first raids on the site on Thursday, but the standoff continued until Saturday, when government forces captured or killed the remaining militants and ended the siege.

According to Salell, the attackers tried to blow up the gas facility on Friday night by planting explosives in a gas pipe and trying to detonate it. The plant produces about 10 percent of the countries gas exports.

The militants demanded an end to French air strikes against Islamist fighters in neighboring Mali that had begun five days earlier. However, U.S. and European officials doubt such a complex raid could have been organized quickly enough to have been conceived as a direct response to the French military intervention.

On Monday, Salell said that a Canadian was one of the coordinators of the attack. Ottawa said it was investigating reports that Canadian nationals were involved.

The siege turned bloody on Thursday when the Algerian army opened fire saying fighters were trying to escape with their prisoners. Survivors said Algerian forces blasted several trucks in a convoy carrying both hostages and their captors.

Nearly 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners escaped, mainly on Thursday when the fighters were driven from the residential barracks. Some captors remained holed up in the industrial complex until Saturday when they were overrun.

Sellal said negotiating with the kidnappers was essentially impossible.

"Their goal was to kidnap foreigners," he said. "They wanted to flee to Mali with the foreigners, but once they were surrounded they started killing the first hostages."

The bloodshed has strained Algeria's relations with its Western allies, some of whom have complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken. Nevertheless, Britain and France both defended the Algerian military action.

"It's easy to say that this or that should have been done. The Algerian authorities took a decision and the toll is very high but I am a bit bothered ... when the impression is given that the Algerians are open to question,'' said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. "They had to deal with terrorists.''

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a televised statement: "Of course people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched this vicious and cowardly attack.

''We should recognize all that the Algerians have done to work with us and to help and coordinate with us. I'd like to thank them for that. We should also recognize that the Algerians too have seen lives lost among their soldiers."

The Islamists' assault has tested Algeria's relations with the outside world and exposed the vulnerability of multinational oil operations in the Sahara.

But physical damage to the gas plant in In Anema was minor, state news service APS reported, citing Oil Minister Youcef Yousfi. The plant would start up again in two days, he said.

Algeria, scarred by the civil war with Islamist insurgents in the 1990s which claimed 200,000 lives, insisted from the start of the crisis there would be no negotiation in the face of terrorism.

France especially needs close cooperation from Algeria to crush Islamist rebels in northern Mali.

Catherine Chomiak, NBC News, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mohamed Al-Sayaghi / Reuters

Army checkpoints in Yemen search for militants, Saturday

SANAA, Yemen — More than 10 suspected al-Qaida operatives were killed by an explosion in a house in south Yemen where they were making bombs and at least three others died in a drone strike, tribal and official sources said on Sunday. 

A bomb ripped through a house in the province of al-Bayda on Saturday night, the state news agency Saba and a local official said. Three other suspected militants were killed in a drone strike in the central province of Maarib, also on Saturday, tribal sources and the Ministry of Defense said.

Yemen's government has been fighting a powerful branch of al-Qaida that took advantage of chaos in the impoverished state two years ago during a popular uprising against former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is considered by Western governments to be one of the most active and dangerous wing of the global network founded by Osama bin Laden, and has attempted a number of attacks against U.S. targets.

The house destroyed in al Bayda had been used for making bombs, an official from the area told Reuters on Sunday.

"We heard a massive explosion that terrified people and when we went to the house it was destroyed and everyone there was dead," the official said.

In Maarib, a pilotless plane carried out two strikes against a car, a witness said.

"One of the strikes missed the target and the other hit the car and left the bodies of the three people in it completely charred," the witness told Reuters by telephone from the area.

He said unidentified people evacuated the bodies while tribesmen blocked the main road linking the capital of Maarib province with Sanaa on Saturday after the strikes.

The Yemeni Defence Ministry said in an SMS text message that a number of militants were killed in two air strikes but gave no further details.

Earlier this month, dozens of armed tribesmen took to the streets in southern Yemen to protest drones they said killed innocent civilians and fed anger against the United States.

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi spoke openly in favor of the strikes during a trip to the United States in September.

Praised by the U.S. ambassador in Sanaa as being more effective against al-Qaida than his predecessor, Hadi was quoted as saying in September that he personally approved every attack. Hadi has not commented on the most recent strikes.

AQAP offshoot, Ansar al-Sharia seized a number of towns in the south in 2011 but Yemeni government forces retook the areas in a U.S.-backed offensive in June.

Twenty-three hostages and 32 militants were killed in the attack on a natural gas plant deep in the Sahara, the Algerian interior ministry said on Saturday, according to news services.

The official also said 107 foreign hostages and 685 Algerian hostages had been released, several news outlets reported.

Earlier, British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond said, speaking on information received by the British government, that the hostage crisis had "been brought to an end."

The militants took over the In Amenas plant on Wednesday, but Algeria's military launched a rescue attempt on Thursday.

The Algerian Press Service reported that a during a final attack by Algeria's military, the militants killed seven hostages, whose nationalities were not revealed. All of the remaining militants were reported killed.

At a joint press conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Hammond described the loss of life as "appalling and unacceptable."

"We remain in close contact with the Algerian government," Hammond said. "We remain determined to defeat terrorism and stand with the Algerian government."

Hammond said that the latest Algerian military operation had resulted in further loss of life. "We are pressing the Algerians for details on the exact situation and the numbers that have been killed and, if any, the numbers rescued," he said.

The Associated Press reported that around 100 of the 135 foreign workers on the site had been freed by Friday. The U.S. government confirmed Friday that one of the dead hostages was Frederick Buttaccio from Texas.

The militants claimed Friday that they were holding two American hostages and would exchange them for two people being held in the United States — the blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Aafie Siddiqque, a 40-year-old Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three, who was convicted of attacking U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

That would appear to account for all five Americans thought to have been at the plant, one U.S. official said, if the militants are telling the truth. 

In a statement Saturday, President Barack Obama said: "The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out ... This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups in North Africa." 

In a news release Saturday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said he feared for the lives of five British citizens who remained unaccounted for, Reuters reported.

Anis Belghoul / AP

Two British hostages -- Peter, left, and Alan, right (no family name available) -- are seen after being released, in a street near the gas plant where they were kidnapped by Islamic militants.

"One British citizen has already been killed in this brutal attack and we now fear the worst for the lives of five others who are not yet accounted for," Cameron said, according to Reuters.

British Petroleum said Saturday that four of its employees were among the hostages who remain missing.

In a conference call with reporters, Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley said 14 of the 18 BP employees who were working at the site are “safe and secure” but four remain missing. Dudley said at this time he could not reveal the identities or nationalities of any of the employees. Dudley said the situation remains “very fluid and complex.”

Based on information from those hostages freed, Dudley said they suffered a “terrible and agonizing ordeal” and the situation inside the facility was “horrific.” Before “pre-judging” the actions taken by Algerian security Dudley said “we need he entire picture.”

The In Amenas plant, in a remote part of the Sahara Desert in eastern Algeria close to the Libyan border, is jointly run by BP, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's state-owned oil company.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related content:

• 1 American killed, 2 escape in Algeria hostage crisis, US officials say; militants seek to trade 2 others for blind sheik
• Details emerge in militant takeover, rescue operation at Algeria gas field

Reuters TV

A wounded man is cared for in a hospital in Tigantourine, Algeria, on Jan. 18, 2013 after being freed from Islamist militant captors at a gas field in Algeria.

The militants had filled five jeeps with hostages and begun to move when Algerian government attack helicopters opened up on them, leaving four in smoking ruins. The fifth vehicle crashed, allowing an Irish hostage inside to clamber out to safety with an explosive belt still strapped around his neck.

Three days into the crisis at a natural gas plant deep in the Sahara, it remained unclear how many had perished in the faceoff between Africa's most uncompromising militant group and the region's most ruthless military.

The government said 12 workers, both foreign and Algerian, were confirmed dead. But the extremists have put the number at 35. And the government attack Thursday on the convoy — as pieced together from official, witness and news media accounts —suggested the death toll could go higher. The U.S. government confirmed that one of the dead was a Texan, Frederick Buttaccio.

Meanwhile, the al-Qaida-linked Masked Brigade behind the operation offered to trade two American hostages for two terrorists behind bars in the U.S., including the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — a deal the U.S. rejected out of hand.

The remote In Amenas plant, jointly run by BP, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's state-owned oil company, is deep in the featureless desert. The Algerian government has released few details about the continuing siege.

By Friday, however, the outlines of the takeover by Islamic militants were coming into focus. The attack had been in the works for two months, a member of the Masked Brigade told an online Mauritanian news outlet that often carries al-Qaida-related announcements. The band of attackers included militants from Algeria, Mali, Egypt, Niger, Mauritania and Canada, he said.

He said militants targeted Algeria because they expected the country to support the international effort to root out extremists in neighboring Mali.

Instead of passing through Algeria's relatively well-patrolled deserts, the attackers came in from southern Libya, where there is little central government and smugglers have long reigned supreme, according to Algeria's Interior Minister Daho Ould Kabila.

He said the attackers consisted of about 30 men armed with rocket launchers and machine guns and under the direct supervision of the Masked Brigade's founder himself, Moktar Belmoktar, a hardened, one-eyed Algerian militant who has battled the Algerian government for years and went on to build a Saharan smuggling and kidnapping empire linked to al-Qaida.

Early Wednesday morning, they crept across the border, 60 miles from the natural gas plant, and fell on a pair of buses taking foreign workers to the airport. The buses' military escort drove off the attackers in a blaze of gunfire that sent bullets zinging over the heads of the crouching workers. A Briton and an Algerian, probably a security guard, were killed.

One American killed, 2 escape in hostage crisis, U.S. officials say; two others reportedly still held

Frustrated, the militants turned to the vast gas complex, divided between the workers' living quarters and the refinery itself, and seized hostages, the Algerian government said.

The takeover soon turned into a standoff as military units from a nearby base surrounded the complex.

Algerian TV via Reuters TV

A British man is interviewed by Algerian TV about the In Amenas hostage taking. "I think they did a fantastic job. I was very impressed with the Algerian army,

Algerians interviewed by French radio described militants knocking down doors in the living quarters, saying they were looking for foreigners. The foreign workers, including Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians and Japanese, were separated from the Algerians and kept under close guard, wrapped with explosive belts. The Algerians for the most part were allowed to wander freely around the complex, and some were released, according to the state news agency.

Alexandre Berceaux, a Frenchman who was later rescued by Algerian soldiers, described two harrowing days of confusion hiding in his room as Algerian colleagues supplied him with food.

"I stayed hidden in my room for almost 40 hours," he told Europe 1 radio, saying he hid under the bed and didn't even realize when his ordeal was over.

The militants declared that the takeover was prompted by France's attacks on al-Qaida-linked rebels in Mali, and they demanded that the intervention end or the hostages would pay for it.

That night, Kabila, Algeria's top security official, announced that in accordance to Algeria's longstanding policy, "we reject all negotiations with the group." Despite regular elections, Algeria is run by a coterie of generals and ruling party leaders who got the country through a bloody, decade-long Islamist rebellion with brutal tactics that earned them the nickname "the eradicators."

On Thursday afternoon, Algerian military forces saw a five- jeep convoy moving from one part of the complex to another. Fearing the kidnappers were trying to make a break for it, they sent attack helicopters into action.

Irish electrician Stephen McFaul was in that convoy and made it out alive as the world exploded around him.

"Four of the jeeps were taken out and everybody in them was killed," McFaul's brother, Brian, told the Irish Times. "The jeep my brother was in crashed and my brother made break for it," with a belt of explosives strapped around his neck.

The kidnappers called the Mauritanian news service ANI to say that 35 hostages and 15 of their fighters had been killed in the bloodbath — a figure that was impossible to confirm. The kidnappers told ANI that they were just trying to consolidate hostages into a single location when the Algerians attacked.

By Thursday night, the state news agency announced that the assault was over and that special forces had secured the plant, but the next day it would emerge that they had taken only the living quarters. The hostages and their kidnappers remained ensconced in the refinery.

An international outcry mounted over the Algerians' handling of the crisis. Experts noted that this is how they have always dealt with terrorists.

"It's the Russian training for dealing with terrorism," said Matieu Guidere, a longtime expert on al-Qaida and Algeria. "The message is: We will terrorize the terrorists. ... This is clear. The life of hostages is nothing in the balance."

The Algerian government insisted it had to intervene to prevent a catastrophe.

Related:

Expert: Islamists' Algeria raid could inspire copycat attacks
Details emerge in militant takeover, rescue operation at Algeria gas field
Violence in Mali, Algeria raises fresh fear of radical Islam
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Algerian militant dubbed 'Mr Marlboro' raked in millions from kidnappings

DIGITALGLOBE/AFP/Getty Images

This satellite image provide by DigitalGlobe from Oct. 8, 2012 shows the In Amenas gas field in Algeria, which is jointly operated by BP, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's Sonatrach.

The audacious assault by Islamist militants on a gas plant in Algeria that led to the capture of scores of hostages could spark copycat attacks, a terrorism expert warned Friday.

Terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News contributor who has worked for the FBI, said that other groups would almost certainly be watching closely as the militant fighters led by Mokhtar bel Mokhtar seized the giant facility near In Amenas — and might be inspired.

"(Militant groups) are all vying for attention — for fighters, for financing. They see this, they see the attention it gets," said Kohlmann, who has written about the enigmatic bel Mokhtar in the past.

Bel Mokhtar has been called "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence, along with "Mr. Marlboro" due to his reputed cigarette-smuggling empire, and "a jihadist straight out of central casting" by the British press.

"This group has carried out similar attacks to this in the past. They've certainly taken hostages. They've launched attacks against gas fields and mines,"  Kohlmann said.

'Nightmarish scenario'
But what made the In Amenas raid different was the size of the plant and the number of hostages.

"It's the scale here that we're talking about that's astounding. Taking a group like this all at once… It's really… It's a nightmarish scenario, to be honest," Kohlmann said.

"Within the past year, he's given several different interviews and video recordings in which he's been very clear that one of the primary targets for his group are those who are coming to Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and are 'stealing our resources.'"

Kohlmann said an attack on a French uranium mine in Niger in 2010 has been linked to bel Mokhtar’s group. In that case, workers were also kidnapped and four are still being held to this day.

Thursday, the operators of that and another Niger uranium mine, Areva, said they were tightening security after tons of its contaminated metal used in the extraction of uranium were found in a public junkyard.

Bel Mokhtar is a veteran of the Afghanistan war against the Soviets, a conflict in which he reportedly lost his eye, and he was also once in charge of al-Qaida’s Saharan arm.

Algerian TV via Reuters TV

Hostages freed from a gas facility in Algeria, where Islamist militants were holding them, are seen embracing in pictures broadcast by Algerian TV.

But he now runs his own gang, analysts say, and there are suspicions that he is now more interested in money than jihad.

"He fought in Afghanistan. He fought with al-Qaida in Algeria for years. This guy has been fighting in Algeria since 1991. Yet at the same time he's much more of a desert mafioso than anything else," Kohlmann said.

"He espouses jihadi aims. But he's very well-known for smuggling weapons, cigarettes, narcotics and of course these hostage-taking incidents where he's taken a lot of flak, including from within the jihadi community itself," he added.

"Some of them have said, ‘look, you talk about taking people hostage in order to get our prisoners released from jails, but then all you do is take ransom money and you let these people go.' … So, some of them have distanced themselves from him because of his attention and profit-seeking behavior, really," Kohlmann added.

He said he suspected bel Mokhtar was trying "to ingratiate himself to some of these other new jihadi movements in West Africa." 

"And what greater way than to do something like this where not only does he get a lot of media attention, but potentially he makes millions of dollars on ransom payments? And that's what these guys are really motivated by — money," Kohlman said.

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The fate of dozens of hostages seized by Islamists at a gas field in Algeria remained unclear early Friday, hours after the Algerian military stormed the site.

At least six people, and perhaps many more, were killed, The Associated Press reported, and dozens were unaccounted for.

Algerian state media reported Thursday evening that the military operation had ended at the remote desert facility where dozens of workers — including three Americans — had been held hostage. The Algerian government was reported as saying two Filipinos and two British hostages had been killed.

Accounts of the number of hostages and militants killed in the operation differed wildly — ranging from four to 35 — in reports from regional sources cited by The Associated Press and Reuters.

Among those unaccounted for were Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese and Algerians.

Some of the hostages reportedly escaped from the natural gas pumping plant, near In Amenas, close to the border with Libya and 800 miles from the Algerian capital.

An unknown number of hostages left the country on a charter flight and were expected to land at London's Gatwick airport near midnight Thursday, according to BP, which operates the gas complex. The plane had not arrived as of 3:15 a.m. Friday.

The Islamist militants stormed the plant and workers' housing before dawn on Wednesday seizing up to 41 hostages in one of the biggest international hostage incidents in decades.

The militants have demanded an end to the French military campaign in Mali where ground troops and air forces of the former colonial power are backing Mali's military in offensive against Islamist rebels linked to al-Qaida in that country.

The group that has claimed responsibility for the gas plant raid is said to be led by an Islamic militant called Mokhtar bel Mokhtar, whose nicknames include "The Uncatchable" and "Mr. Marlboro."

According to the AP, militants with the Masked Brigade, a Mali-based al-Qaida offshoot, provided updates through a Mauritanian news organization that said the Algerians attacked when the militants tried to move hostages from the energy complex. The group claimed that 35 hostages and 15 militants died but seven hostages survived the helicopter attack on its convoy.

An Algerian security official says the decision to send forces came because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.

U.S. officials called the hostage situation "murky" and said the United States is working with the Algerian government and other affected nations to try to resolve the situation as quickly and securely as possible.

"It's in a remote area of Algeria, near the Libyan border," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. "The security of our Americans who are held hostage is our highest priority, but of course we care deeply about the other Algerian and foreign hostages as well."

Clinton said she could not provide any additional information about the situation. 

An Ireland government spokesman said Thursday that an Irish national held at the In Amenas gas plant had "made contact with his family and is understood to be safe and well, and no longer a hostage."

Sky News in London identified the Irish survivor as Stephen McFaul, 46, from west Belfast.

In an interview with the television station, McFaul's father Christopher said he was "delighted" by the news but added he felt "sorry for the other hostages that are still there."

He also described the last 48 hours as "hell".

Stephen McFaul's son, Dylan, also spoke to the Sky reporters: "I can't even explain the excitement. I can't wait until he gets home again," he said, adding that he would tell his father "he's never going back there and I'm not letting him".

A local resident near the plant told Reuters the Algerian military had opened fire and that "many people" were killed.

Faycal Metaqui, a journalist at Algerian newspaper El Watan, told French news channel BFM that he was unable to confirm with authorities the earlier reports that some hostages had escaped.

"Sadly, there have been some reports of casualties, but we are still lacking any confirmed or reliable information," said a statement from oil giant BP, which is a joint owner of the plant.

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Nancy Ing, Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube of NBC News, contributed to this report.