Eleven hostage-takers have been killed as Algerian troops launched a final raid on a Sahara gas plant where foreign workers were being held captive, state news agency APS said.
Seven hostages were summarily killed by their captors as the troops tried to free them, the agency said.
The nationalities of the dead hostages are not known.
The militants had been involved in a stand-off since Thursday after trying to occupy the remote site.
The Algerian military has been fighting Islamist militancy since the 1990s
Algerian reaction to raid rooted in history
By Aidan LewisBBC News
Algeria’s military intervention against kidnappers at a Saharan gas plant apparently came as a surprise to those foreign governments whose citizens were being held hostage.
‘No negotiation’
It’s important for [the authorities] to show to a domestic audience that they’re not beholden to the international community, that they’re not just a puppet government”
Robert ParksCentre for North African Studies
Algerian authorities have expressed some bitterness that they were left to fight this conflict on their own, before most of the rest of the world was confronted with the threat from Islamist militancy.
But they also take pride in their counter-terrorism experience, their military suppression of armed groups and their publicly-stated reluctance to negotiate or pay ransoms.
“We say that confronted with terrorism, yesterday as today and tomorrow, there will be no negotiation, no blackmail, no let-up in the fight against terrorism,” said Algerian Communications Minister Mohamed Said Belaid.
“Those who think we will negotiate with terrorists are delusional.”
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