The gunmen, whose leader is Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former Al-Qaeda commander, first killed a Briton and an Algerian on a bus before taking hundreds hostage at the plant.
Most hostages were freed on Thursday when Algerian forces launched a first rescue operation which was initially widely condemned as hasty by the West, where leaders later had a change of heart, focusing their criticism on the jihadists.
“The blame for this tragedy rests with the terrorists who carried it out, and the United States condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms,” said US President Barack Obama after at least one American had already been confirmed dead.
French President Francois Hollande called Algiers’ response “the most appropriate” given it was dealing with “coldly determined terrorists ready to kill their hostages.”
His foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said he was “shocked” Algeria’s response was being called into question. “There must be no impunity for terrorists,” he said, adding responses to such attacks must be “relentless”.
Cameron also recognised the attack had been an “extremely difficult” situation to deal with.
Monitoring group IntelCenter said the hostage-taking was the largest since the 2008 Mumbai attack, and the biggest by jihadists since hundreds were killed in a Moscow theatre in 2002 and at a school in the Russian town of Beslan in 2004.
Algerian driver Iba El Haza, who had escaped on Thursday, told AFP the hostage-takers spoke in different Arabic dialects.
“The terrorists said: ‘You have nothing to do with this, you are Algerians and Muslims. We won’t keep you, we only want the foreigners’.”
Hollande said French troops would stay in neighbouring Mali as long as necessary “to defeat terrorism”.
Meanwhile French troops on Sunday advanced towards Mali’s Islamist-held north as Russia and Canada offered to help transport French and African soldiers to boost the Paris-led offensive.
On Saturday West African leaders demanded speedy UN aid to rout Islamists holding the vast desert north.
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