IN AMENAS (Algeria), Jan 18: Islamist hostage-takers at a remote Algerian gas field on Friday demanded a prisoner swap and an end to the French military campaign in Mali, a report said, as 30 foreigners were reported still missing in the worst international hostage drama for years.

But amid foreign criticism over the haste of an Algerian military assault on the remote desert site, the APS news agency said special forces had freed more than 670 hostages, among them 573 Algerians and around 100 foreigners.

The army was still trying to free those foreigners still held by Al Qaeda-linked militants across the complex deep in the Sahara near the Libyan border, APS said.

It “is trying to reach a peaceful solution before neutralising the terrorist group that is holed up in the plant and freeing a group of hostages still being held there”.

British Prime Minister David Cameron warned that the In Amenas plant was a “large and complex site and they are still pursuing terrorists and possibly some of the hostages in other areas of the site.”

The Algerian operation was launched on Thursday, a day after kidnappers seized the plant to avenge what they said was Algiers’ support for French air strikes in neighbouring Mali.

The kidnappers said 34 captives were killed in the army assault, but an Algerian security source called that “fantasy,” saying 18 of more than 30 Islamist gunmen were killed.

Mr Cameron, who said he was “disappointed” not to have been told by the Algerians in advance, said “significantly” fewer than 30 British citizens remained at risk at the field, operated jointly by Britain’s BP, Norway’s Statoil and Sonatrach of Algeria.

The gunmen from a group known as “Signatories in Blood” want to negotiate an end to French intervention in Mali and exchange American hostages for prisoners held in the United States, Mauritanian news agency ANI quoted sources close to their leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, as saying on Friday.

ANI reported that Belmokhtar, a veteran Algerian Islamist with ties to Al Qaeda who has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack, had proposed that Paris and Algiers negotiate “an end to the war being waged by France in Azawad” (northern Mali).

In what ANI said was a video that would be released to media, he also proposes exchanging American hostages held by his group for Egyptian Omar Abdul Rahman and Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, jailed in the United States on charges of terrorist links.

Algeria has insisted it will not negotiate with “terrorists.”—AFP