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.

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By Friday, around 100 of the 135 foreign workers on the site had been freed and 18 of an estimated 30 kidnappers had been slain, according to the Algerian government, still leaving a major hostage situation centered on the plant's main refinery.

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.

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
US military cargo planes to help French in Mali
Algerian militant dubbed 'Mr Marlboro' raked in millions from kidnappings

 

 

Updated at 2:45 p.m. ET: LONDON -- Malala Yousufzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban, has every chance of making a "good recovery," British doctors said on Monday as she arrived at a hospital in central England for treatment of her severe wounds.

Yousufzai, who was shot for advocating education for girls, was flown from Pakistan to receive specialist treatment at a unit at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital that has expertise in dealing with complex trauma cases. The unit has treated hundreds of soldiers wounded in Afghanistan.

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"Doctors... believe she has a chance of making a good recovery on every level," said Dr. Dave Rosser, the hospital's medical director, adding that her treatment and rehabilitation could take months.

He told reporters Yousufzai, whose shooting has drawn widespread condemnation, had not yet been assessed by British medics but said she would not have been brought to Britain at all if her prognosis was not good.

TV footage showed a patient, believed to be the schoolgirl, being rushed from an ambulance into the hospital surrounded by a large team of medical staff.

She will undergo scans to reveal the extent of her injuries, but Rosser said doctors could not provide any further details without her agreement.

Pakistani surgeons removed a bullet from near the girl's spinal cord during a three-hour operation the day after the attack last week, but she now needs intensive specialist follow-up care. Treatment is likely to include repairing damaged bones in her skull and complex neurological follow-up.

"Injuries to bones in the skull can be treated very successfully by the neurosurgeons and the plastic surgeons, but it is the damage to the blood supply to the brain that will determine long-term disability," said Duncan Bew, consultant trauma surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust in London. Judging the best way forward in such difficult cases requires a wide range of experienced medics working as a team.

"In trauma, it is really the coordinated impact of intensive care that is critical. It's not just about keeping the patient alive but also maximising their rehabilitation potential. With neurological injuries that is paramount," Bew said.

Doctors said youth was on her side since a young brain has more ability to recover from injury than a mature one.

"On the positive side, Malala has passed two major hurdles - the removal of the bullet and the very critical 48-hour window after surgery," said Anders Cohen, head of neurosurgery at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Yousufzai would receive specialized care in a hospital in the country’s National Health Service system.

"Last week's barbaric attack on Malala Yousufzai and her school friends shocked Pakistan and the world.  Malala's bravery in standing up for the right of all young girls in Pakistan to an education is an example to us all,” Hague said in a statement.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital is the main receiving facility for British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan, and the spokeswoman said the staff were confident they would be able to provide Yousufzai with the necessary care.

Read more on this story at ITV News

Earlier, a medical team from the United Arab Emirates decided that Yousufzai would require prolonged care to recover fully from the physical and psychological trauma, a Pakistani military statement said before she left for Britain. The panel of doctors recommended she receive treatment abroad, the statement said.

Yousufzai's family was consulted and their wishes were taken into consideration, according to the military.

Attacked while leaving school
Yousufzai was leaving school in her hometown in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan on Oct. 9 when she was shot in the head and neck by the Taliban for speaking out against the militants and promoting education for girls.

Yousufzai, a cheerful schoolgirl who had wanted to become a doctor before agreeing to her father's wishes that she strive to be a politician, has become a potent symbol of resistance against the Taliban's efforts to deprive girls of education.

On Sunday, tens of thousands rallied in Pakistan's largest city in support of Yousufzai.

The demonstration in the southern city of Karachi was by far the largest since Yousufzai and two of her classmates were shot.

Still, most government officials have refrained from publicly criticizing the Taliban by name over the attack, in what critics say is a lack of resolve against extremism. 

Opponents of Pakistan's government and military say the shooting is another example of the state's failure to tackle militancy, the biggest threat to the stability of the nuclear-armed South Asian country.

The shooting of Yousufzai was the culmination of years of campaigning that had pitted the young girl against one of Pakistan's most ruthless Taliban commanders, Maulana Fazlullah.

‘Public revulsion and condemnation’
The attack horrified people inside and outside Pakistan and sparked hope among some that it would prompt the government to intensify its fight against the Taliban and their allies.

“The public revulsion and condemnation of this cowardly attack shows that the people of Pakistan will not be beaten by terrorists.  The U.K. stands shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism,” Britain’s Hague said in his statement.

But protests against the shooting have been relatively small until now, usually attracting no more than a few hundred people.

That response pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of people who held violent protests in Pakistan last month against a film produced in the United States that denigrated Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Fresh Taliban attack
The Taliban struck again on Sunday night, attacking the police outpost near Peshawar with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, according to Reuters. Security officials said at least six policemen were killed, including two who were beheaded.

Seven policemen are still missing and presumed kidnapped. Several police cars and an armored vehicle were torched.

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The Taliban has been blamed for many suicide bombings across Pakistan and have also staged sophisticated, high-profile attacks on the military, one of the biggest in the world.

Pakistan's interior minister said police had dispatched guards to protect journalists who had been threatened by Taliban militants angered by coverage of Yousufzai's case.

The Taliban, based mostly in the unruly ethnic Pashtun tribal areas near the Afghan border, have said they would now try to kill her father, a headmaster of a girls' school in Swat.

Reuters and NBC News' Fakhar Rehman contributed to this report.

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