In Eastern Algeria, at least 37 hostages died in a terrorist attack of a natural gas facility.
" Five other hostages are missing from the In Amenas complex and could be dead", Prime Minister Abdul Malek Sallal said. Before this statement, officials from the companies that employed these workers confirmed 29 deaths. 7 of the 37 bodies have not been identified yet. Those who have been identified include seven Japanese, six Filipinos, three Americans, three Britons and one Algerian.
        The standoff ended Saturday, after four days. The government said it did so because the militants were planning to blow up the installation and flee to neighboring Mali with hostages. "If it exploded, it could have killed and destroyed anything within 5 kilometers or further," Sallal said.
       The crisis began Wednesday when Islamist extremists  struck the natural gas complex west of the Libyan border, gathered the Westerners who worked there and took them as hostages. Then, they planted explosives throughout the complex. According to the prime minister, Algeria's military talked with the militants, but their demands that prisoners in the North African nation be released were denied. The country's special forces waged the assaults to free the hostages and were backed by the Algerian Air Force. "At one point, the militants tried to flee the compound in vehicles that carried explosives and three or four hostages as human shields", Sallal said. "At least two of the vehicles flipped and exploded during the attempt", he said.
    Islamist militant activity is not new to Africa. Algeria's status as Africa's largest natural gas producer and a major supplier of the product to Europe encourages others to invest there. That interest is coupled with pressure to make sure foreign nationals, and their business ventures, are safe. Algeria can keep its gas facilities secure without foreign forces' help; foreign workers will soon return. Several foreign companies, including Statoil and BP, evacuated their workers from Algeria after the incident.
    This article was found on the CNN website and was written by an unspecified source at 8:31 tonight. I found the article a little confusing because it kept bouncing back and fourth with random details about the prime minister and then about the plant and then about the terrorists. The amount of detail given was much appreciated, however it needed clarity