Algerian authorities confirmed to Britain there was an “ongoing operation” on Thursday at the Algerian gas plant where Islamist gunmen were holding dozens of foreign hostages, the Foreign Office said.
“The prime minister was updated on the latest situation by the Algerian prime minister in the last hour,” a spokeswoman said.
“It remains an ongoing situation. The Algerian authorities have confirmed that there is an ongoing operation,” she added.
A spokesman for the kidnappers told a Mauritania-based news agency that 34 hostages and 15 kidnappers had been killed in an Algerian army assault on the BP-operated plant.
The militants killed two people including one Briton in Wednesday’s attack at southern Algerian gas field and took 41 hostages, including British, Irish, French, Norwegian and Japanese citizens.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman said earlier Thursday that Britain would consider any requests for help from Algeria in its efforts to free the hostages.
“As part of his discussions with his Algerian counterpart yesterday the prime minister made clear that we would consider any request that they made for assistance,” Cameron’s spokesman said, adding that no request had been made so far.
The spokesman said the hostage-taking bore the hallmarks of a pre-planned attack.
“The nature and extent of the attack suggest a considerable degree of pre-planning,” he said.
The premier called two meetings of Britain’s Cobra emergency committee on Thursday to discuss the hostage crisis and was due to chair another from the Netherlands on Friday, where he is giving a key speech on the EU.
He has also spoken with the prime ministers of Norway and Japan over the situation, his spokesman said.
“They shared the information they had and agreed that the right approach was to continue working through the Algerian government and the companies including BP that are involved at the plant and site in question,” he said.
The spokesman would not be drawn on whether British special forces were on standby, while a government source said the Algerian government saw the incident as “very much on sovereign territory”.
Britain is also in touch with France over the crisis, the source added.
Junior foreign minister Alistair Burt, meanwhile, cut short a trip to Egypt on Thursday to fly home to work on ending the hostage situation.
'Ongoing operation' at Algeria gas plant: FO
