A statement from the Syrian military read aloud on state TV confirmed the strike, saying the jets bombed a military research center in the area of Jamraya, northwest of the capital, Damascus.

The statement said the center was responsible for "raising the level of resistance and self-defense" of Syria's military. It said the strike destroyed the center and a nearby building, killing two workers and wounding five others.

U.S. and regional security officials reported the strike earlier Wednesday but did not say exactly where it took place.

Regional security officials said Israel had been planning in the days leading up to the airstrike to hit a shipment of weapons bound for Hezbollah, Lebanon's most powerful military force. Among Israeli officials' chief fears is that Assad will pass chemical weapons or sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah something that could change the balance of power in the region and greatly hinder Israel's ability to conduct air sorties in Lebanon.

The regional officials said the shipment Israel was planning to strike included Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically "game-changing" in the hands of Hezbollah by enabling the group to carry out fiercer attacks on Israel and shoot down Israeli jets, helicopters and surveillance drones.

Hezbollah has committed to Israel's destruction and has gone to war against the Jewish state in the past.

A U.S. official confirmed the strike, saying it hit a convoy of trucks.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the strike.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

Syria has long been among the militant group's most significant backers and is suspected of supplying with funding and arms, as well as a land corridor to Iran.

This strike, however, comes as Assad is enmeshed in a civil war with rebels trying to oust him. The rebels have seized a large swath of territory in the country's north and established footholds in a number of suburbs of the Syrian capital, Damascus, though Assad's forces still control the city and much of the rest of the country.

While Assad's fall does not appear imminent, analysts worry he could grow desperate as his power wanes and seek to cause trouble elsewhere in the region through proxy groups like Hezbollah.

The Syrian army statement denied that the strike had targeted a convoy headed from Syria to Lebanon, instead portraying the strike as linked to the civil war pitting Assad's forces against rebels seeking to push him from power.

"This proves that Israel is the instigator, beneficiary and sometimes executor of the terrorist acts targeting Syria and its people," the statement said.

The location could not be independently confirmed because of reporting restrictions in Syria.

Syria's government portrays the crisis, which started with political protest in 2011 and has since become a civil war, as a foreign-backed conspiracy meant to destroy the country.

Top Israeli officials have recently expressed worries that if desperate, Assad's regime could pass chemical weapons to Hezbollah or other militant groups.

President Barack Obama has called Syria's use of chemical weapons a "red line" whose crossing could prompt a tougher U.S. response, but U.S. officials say they are tracking Syria's chemical weapons and that they still appear to be under regime control.

The strike, carried out either late Tuesday or early Wednesday, appears to be the latest move in a long running race by Hezbollah to increase its military power while Israel seeks to limit it.

Israel suspects that Damascus obtained a battery of SA-17s from Russia after an alleged Israeli airstrike in 2007 that destroyed an unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor.

Earlier this week, Israel moved a battery of its new "Iron Dome" rocket defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was battered by Hezbollah rocket fire in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The Israeli army called that move "routine."

If confirmed, the airstrike would be the first inside Syria in more than five years. In September 2007, Israeli warplanes destroyed a site in Syria that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed likely to be a secretly built nuclear reactor. Syria has denied the claim, saying the building was a non-nuclear military site.

Syria allowed international inspectors to visit the bombed site in 2008 but it has refused to allow nuclear inspectors new access. This has heightened suspicions that Syria has something to hide, along with its decision to level the destroyed structure and later build over it.

Israeli warplanes flew over Assad's palace in 2006 after Syrian-backed militants in Gaza captured an Israeli soldier.

And in 2003, Israeli warplanes attacked a suspected militant training camp just north of the Syrian capital, in response to an Islamic JIhad suicide bombing in the city of Haifa that killed 21 Israelis.

Syria vowed to retaliate for both attacks, but never did.

The military in Lebanon, which shares borders with both Israel and Syria, said Wednesday that Israeli warplanes have sharply increased their activity over Lebanon in the past week, including at least 12 sorties in less than 24 hours in the country's south.

A senior Lebanese security official said no Israeli airstrikes occurred inside Lebanese territory. Asked whether it could have been along the border on the Syrian side, he said that that could not be confirmed as it was out of his area of operations.

He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A Lebanese army statement said the last of the sorties took place at 2 a.m. local time Wednesday. It said four warplanes which flew in over the southernmost coastal town of Naqoura hovered for several hours over villages in southern Lebanon before leaving Lebanese airspace.

It said similar flights by eight other warplanes were conducted Tuesday.

A Lebanese security official said the flights were part of "increased activity" in the past week but did not elaborate. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

The U.N. Agency tasked with monitoring the Lebanon-Israeli border said in a statement Wednesday it had no information on any strikes near the Syria-Lebanon border. It did note, however, a "high number of Israeli overflights" on Tuesday.

"These air violations have continued on an almost daily basis," it said.

The area of Lebanon where the flights took place borders southern Syria.

Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace are not uncommon and Lebanese authorities routinely lodge complaints at the U.N. against the flights.

Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 war, and Syria demands the area back as part of any peace deal. Despite hostility between the two countries, Syria has been careful to keep the border quiet since the 1973 Mideast war and has never retaliated to Israeli attacks since.

In May 2011, only two months after the uprising against Assad started, hundreds of Palestinians overran the tightly controlled Syria-Israeli frontier in a move widely thought to have been facilitated by the Assad regime, to divert the world's gaze from his growing troubles at home.

___

Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut, Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

That doesn't prove carrying around some extra weight in childhood causes MS - in which the protective coating around nerve fibers breaks down, slowing signals traveling between the brain and body.

But it does suggest rising levels of obesity in young people could mean more MS diagnoses than in the past, according to lead study author Dr. Annette Langer-Gould from Kaiser Permanente of Southern California and her colleagues.

"Obesity is increasing the risk of so many different kinds of diseases," said Kassandra Munger, who studies MS at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston but was not involved in the new work.

"This current study now adds to the evidence that it's also dangerous and increases the risk of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis," Munger told Reuters Health.

For their study, Langer-Gould and her colleagues compared the heights and weights of 75 kids with pediatric MS and its possible precursor, a condition called clinically isolated syndrome - and more than 900,000 kids without the diseases.

Just over half of the kids and teens with MS were overweight or obese, compared to 37 percent of other youth, according to findings published Wednesday in the journal Neurology.

Being overweight or moderately obese was tied to a slightly higher chance of MS in adolescent girls, but the results were based on a small number of cases and could have been due to chance. Extreme obesity, on the other hand, was linked more clearly with a three- to four-fold higher risk of MS.

A five-foot, 12-year-old girl is considered overweight at 112 pounds and extremely obese at over 155 pounds.

There was no clear pattern between boys' weights and how likely they were to be diagnosed with MS, Langer-Gould's team found.

Roughly 400,000 people in the United States have MS - usually diagnosed in adulthood. Just one or two out of every 100,000 children are diagnosed with pediatric MS, Langer-Gould said.

Based on limited evidence about any effects of weight, she said she was "actually surprised" her team found any link with MS risk.

"It's not something we think of as a risk factor for multiple sclerosis," Langer-Gould told Reuters Health.

According to Munger, there are a number of possible explanations for why heavy people could be at increased risk, including their vitamin levels and the greater amounts of chemicals - such as inflammation-inducing signaling molecules - secreted by their fat cells.

But, "It's not easy to tease those out," Munger told Reuters Health. "From a biological perspective, we don't know what the link is between obesity and MS."

Langer-Gould and her colleagues are continuing to track children in their study over time and are also working on another project to see if adults' weight affects their chance of developing MS.

"MS in children is extremely rare, but this is one more reason to encourage children to be a healthy weight," she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/lUcacJ Neurology, online January 30, 2013.

The group's official Twitter account, which has thousands of followers, was offline on Friday with a message saying "Sorry, that user is suspended".

It was not immediately clear why the account, which was created in 2011 under the HSM PRESS Twitter handle, was suspended. The account was still unavailable as of 1233 GMT.

On Wednesday the al Qaeda-aligned rebels used the social media site to threaten to kill several Kenyan hostages and on January 17 announced the execution of a captive French agent after a French commando mission to rescue him failed.

"The enemies have shut down our Twitter account," al Shabaab's most senior media officer, who refused to be named, told Reuters.

"They shut it down because our account overpowered all the Christians' mass media and they could not tolerate the grief and the failure of the Christians we always displayed (online)."

Al Shabaab wants to impose their strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, across Somalia. However, it has lost significant territory in the southern and central parts of the country in the face of an offensive by African Union troops.

Twitter said it does not comment on individual accounts and the Kenyan government denied it had filed any request for the account to be taken down.

"It's an emphatic no. We would not try to negotiate or have anything to do with the Al Shabaab. We didn't even know the account was suspended," said government spokesman Muthui Kariuki.

Al Shabaab posted on the account on Wednesday a link to a video of two Kenyan civil servants held hostage in Somalia, telling the Kenyan government their lives were in danger unless it released all Muslims held on "so-called terrorism charges" in the country.

"Kenyan government has three weeks, starting midnight 24/01/2013 to respond to the demands of HSM if the prisoners are to remain alive," the group said.

Despite the closure of the Twitter account, al Shabaab said it would continue to "display the loss and grief of Christians no matter what means we use," al Shabaab's spokesman said.

People in the north Malian city who have knowledge of the documents reported that there was no malicious destruction of any library or collection, said the University of Cape Town, which helped fund a state-of-the-art library to house manuscripts.

"The custodians of the libraries worked quietly throughout the rebel occupation of Timbuktu to ensure the safety of their materials," said the university. Islamist rebels have been in control of Timbuktu for nearly 10 months.

The university said that a report from Britain's Sky News that 25,000 manuscripts had been burned was false. Other news reports quoted the city mayor, who wasn't in the city, saying manuscripts had been destroyed, the university said.

With its Islamic treasures and centuries-old mud-walled buildings including an iconic mosque, Timbuktu is a U.N.-designated World Heritage Site.

Most of the manuscripts, which are as many as 900 years old, were gathered between the 1980s and 2000 from all over Mali for the Ahmad Baba Institute for Higher Learning and Islamic Research, which moved into its new home in 2009.

Media reports said that the Ahmad Baba Institute had been ransacked by the militants. But the university said a senior researcher at the institute, Mohamed Diagayete, said the majority of the manuscripts were stored in an older building elsewhere in the city.

The manuscripts cover subjects from science, astrology and medicine to history, theology, grammar and geography. They date back to the late 12th century, the start of a 300-year golden age for Timbuktu as a spiritual and intellectual capital for the propagation of Islam.

Islamist extremists decimated tourism in 2011 when three Europeans were taken hostage from a Timbuktu restaurant in November that year. In April 2012, Tuareg nationalist rebels seized control of Timbuktu from government troops. A day later Islamist insurgents moved into the city. They banned music, insisted women cover themselves and began carrying out public executions.

On Tuesday, Timbuktu was in control of French and Malian troops, including some 250 French paratroopers dropped from the sky. The extremists melted into the desert without firing a shot. Townspeople were jubilant at the city's liberation from intolerant Islamist extremists.

"The protection of the cultural and intellectual heritage of this region needs to be enhanced and promoted," the university said. "The abandonment of the security of Timbuktu nine months ago, the flight of archivists and researchers, and the closure of libraries should not be repeated."

___

Online: www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org

Lupul, who recently signed a five-year, $26 million contract, was injured during Wednesday's win over the Pittsburgh Penguins when a shot by team mate Dion Phaneuf struck him in front of the net.

"He's a huge part of our team up front, and it's terrible when you lose a guy like that," Phaneuf told reporters.

Lupul was scoreless in three games but ranked second among the Maple Leafs in goals (25) and points (67) last season.

(Reporting by Gene Cherry in Salvo, North Carolina; editing by Steve Keating.)

Lawyers for the prisoners say they need to spend time inside Camp 7 to evaluate conditions to defend clients charged with aiding and planning the attacks as well as to prepare for any eventual penalty phase in the death penalty case.

Prosecutors told a judge at a pretrial hearing they do not oppose allowing the defense lawyers to see the inside of Camp 7, but want to limit the number of visitors and oppose a defense request to spend 48 continuous hours inside a facility so shrouded in secrecy that its precise location on the U.S. base in Cuba is secret.

Army Maj. Robert McGovern, a member of the prosecution team, said an extended visit could compromise security and he asked the military judge, Army Col. James Pohl, to impose restrictions on the visit.

"We don't think it is appropriate to be able to just walk around the confinement facility and just tap people on the shoulder," McGovern told the judge during a four-day pretrial hearing in the case.

The five defendants, who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has portrayed himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, were transferred to Camp 7 in September 2006 from clandestine CIA prisons.

David Nevin, a lawyer for Mohammed, said the defense needs 48 hours of continuous observation to "document exactly what life in these camps is like."

The military allowed two defense lawyers to take a brief tour of the facility in 2008 but otherwise kept it off-limits.

Judge Pohl did not issue an immediate ruling laying out the exact terms of their access.It was one of about two dozen motions he considering this week. The five face charges that include murder and terrorism for their alleged roles planning and aiding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Their trial is at least a year away.

Athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the school has encouraged the Heisman Trophy finalist to talk publicly about a hoax that turned the feel-good story of the college football season into one of the most bizarre in memory.

During the taping of his weekly radio show, posted online Friday, Swarbrick called on Te'o to explain exactly how he was duped into an online relationship with a woman whose "death" was faked by people behind the scam.

Skeptics have questioned statements from Te'o and Notre Dame, wondering why the player failed to mention he never met his girlfriend face-to-face, or tell the school about the ruse until Dec. 26 nearly three weeks after officials say Te'o learned he had been fooled.

Swarbrick believes Te'o ultimately will speak publicly.

"I don't have any specific knowledge as to how and when, but I can't fathom a circumstance where it doesn't (happen). I sort of share everybody's view that it has to happen," he said. "We are certainly encouraging it to happen. We think it's important and we'd like to see it happen sooner rather than later."

He said that before Deadspin.com broke the news about the hoax in a lengthy report Wednesday, Te'o and his family had planned to go public with the story Monday.

"Sometimes the best laid plans don't quite work, and this was an example of that. Because the family lost the opportunity in some ways to control the story," he said."It is in the Te'o family's court. We are very much encouraging them."

Former NFL coach Tony Dungy, who mentored Michael Vick when he returned to the NFL after doing prison time, had similar advice.

"I don't know the whole case but I always advise people to face up to it and just talk to people and say what happened," Dungy said while attending the NCAA convention in Dallas on Friday. "The truth is the best liberator, so that's what I would do. And he's going to get questioned a lot about it."

Te'o led a lightly regarded Fighting Irish team to a 12-0 regular season and the BCS title game, where they were routed 42-14 by Alabama and Te'o played poorly.

He was said to be staying at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where he and about 35 other NFL draft hopefuls were invited to work out. He has been projected to be a first-round draft pick in April, possibly among the first 10 picks.

Several athletes at IMG tweeted on Friday that they had seen Te'o on the sprawling campus. But he was never spotted by a group of reporters who waited nearby for a chance to ask him a question. His agent Tom Condon didn't return messages and the IMG Academy didn't respond to requests for comment.

Dungy said Te'o could face the toughest questions from NFL teams.

"If I was still coaching and we're thinking about taking this guy in the first round, you want to know not exactly what happened but what is going on with this young man and is it going to be a deterrent to him surviving in the NFL and is it going to stop him from being a star," Dungy said. "So just tell the truth about what happened and this is why, I think, that's the best thing."

On campus, the mood was still supportive, though some students were looking for answers, too.

"I'd like to know more, but I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he's just being gullible," said Stephen Raab, a chemical engineer freshman from Bloomington, Minn.

Long Tran, who roomed with Te'o in his freshman and sophomore years, said he "wholeheartedly" believes his friend was the victim of the hoax, not a willing participant, as was suggested in the Deadspin report.

"Funny thing, I think he went to classes more than I did and I'm an engineering major," Tran said. "During regular season, he would barely go out. Most of the times, he didn't have the time to with his training schedule. He stayed focused 100 percent. I remember one time, a football player came into our room drunk and was talking to Manti, asking him why he didn't go out with them. Manti responded, 'Because we have practice tomorrow.' He was definitely sociable. He knew most people in the dorm and everyone knew who he was, obviously."

Tran said he knew nothing about Lennay Kekua, the online girlfriend who supposedly died of leukemia during the season but, it turns out, didn't even exist. Tran said Te'o wasn't particularly tech savvy, saying the linebacker didn't own a laptop his first two years at college.

"He was using my laptop to do his homework. If he was Skyping his family he would use my laptop," Tran said.

Tran said Te'o kept a low profile and didn't date a lot. "Girls would come to the room and visit him and (Notre Dame cornerback) Lo Wood and hang out," he said. "But there was no talk of an official girlfriend or anything."

Deadspin reported that friends and relatives of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a 22-year-old who lives in California, believe he created Kekua. The website also reported Te'o and Tuiasosopo knew each other which has led to questions about Te'o's involvement in the hoax.

Swarbrick understands why there are questions.

"They have every right to say that," Swarbrick said "Now I have some more information than they have. But they have every right to say that. ... I just ask those people to apply the same skepticism to everything about this. I have no doubt the perpetrators have a story they will yet spin about what went on here. I hope skepticism also greets that when they're articulating what that is."

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AP sports writers Tim Reynolds and Stephen Hawkins contributed to this report.

Reid, a longtime gun-rights advocate from Nevada, recently had indicated he would not permit a vote because the Republican-led House of Representatives likely won't go along with such a prohibition.

Powerful gun-rights groups oppose a ban on assault weapons and could seek to unseat any lawmaker who backs it, as they have tried to do in the past.

But after a weekly meeting on Tuesday with fellow Senate Democrats, Reid told reporters that he expects "to have a free amendment process" on gun legislation.

That process could result in other Democrats proposing a possible resurrection of a 10-year ban on semi-automatic assault weapons that expired in 2004.

President Barack Obama proposed a package of measures last week to combat gun violence that includes a ban on assault weapons, limits on high-capacity ammunition clips, expanded mental health treatments and improved school security.

Reid said he expects the Senate Judiciary Committee, which opens hearings next week on proposals by Obama and others, to produce a bill. It is unclear if the measure will include a ban on assault weapons.

"It may not be everything everyone wants. But I hope it has stuff that is really important," Reid told reporters.

A series of shootings in the last two months, including one at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut, in which 20 children and six educators were slain, has triggered a renewed national debate on gun control.

(Reporting By Thomas Ferraro; editing by Fred Barbash and Philip Barbara)

The Swiss impresario immortalized by rock group Deep Purple as "Funky Claude" in the song "Smoke on the Water" and who lured the biggest stars of the music world to his festival on the shores of Lake Geneva died on Thursday at the age of 76.

"He died peacefully, surrounded by family and close friends," said a statement issued by the festival, where Mathieu Jaton assumed his duties as director earlier this week.

Nobs launched the summer festival in 1967 while working as an accountant at the Swiss resort's tourism office. Over the years, his blend of persistence, patience and charm managed to persuade leading lights such as Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Prince to take the stage at Montreux.

But he often had to meet their whims to coax them along.

"I got Miles a Ferrari for him to drive along the lake, Nina Simone wanted a diamond watch and we found the mineral water that Prince likes in Geneva. We always find a way," Nobs told Reuters last April during an interview at his beloved chalet.

A former festival employee told Reuters on Friday: "He was a shy man but still managed to negotiate. That was his strength and led him to create something huge."

Nobs fell while cross-country skiing on Christmas Eve near his chalet in Caux, overlooking Montreux, a property that he shared with his longtime partner Thierry Amsallem, who is in charge of digitalizing the festival's archives of 5,000 hours.

Last year's two-week festival, which attracted about 250,000 people, featured sold-out concerts by Bob Dylan, American chanteuse Lana Del Rey and British actor and musician Hugh Laurie.

A musical tribute to the people of Montreux is planned in February, in accordance with his wishes, to be followed by events in New York and London this spring, festival board president Francois Carrard told Reuters.

CHALET PARTIES

Nobs threw legendary parties at his chalet, full of vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes, flat screen TVs and sophisticated sound equipment. Waiters delivered fine food and champagne around a pool with a breathtaking view of the Alps.

A Japanese kimono worn by Freddie Mercury, a print signed by Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones and a larger-than-life bust of Aretha Franklin were among mementoes on display.

Film director Roman Polanski stopped in on his way to see his wife Emmanuelle Seigner perform at Montreux in 2010. Days earlier he had been freed from house arrest in Gstaad after Swiss authorities said they would not extradite him to the United States to face sentencing for having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

Herbie Hancock, Van Morrison, Phil Collins and Gilberto Gil have all been regulars at the festival, whose two venues are the larger Stravinski Auditorium and more intimate Miles Davis Hall.

In the mid-1960s, after his first flight on an airplane, Nobs formed a decisive and lifetime friendship in New York with Atlantic Records executive Nesuhi Ertegun, whose father was a former ambassador of Turkey to Switzerland.

"That first time I met Nesuhi, I had no credentials, nothing, something magical happened," Nobs recalled in his memoirs "Live! From Montreux", first published in 2007.

Of the first edition, he wrote: "That first festival was obviously when I had to learn a massive amount extremely quickly - from how you deal with one artist arriving whilst the act from the previous night's show still hasn't woken up yet, let alone vacated the suite the incoming band are supposed to be going straight into."

The Deep Purple anthem which dubbed Nobs "Funky" was written about a fire that burned down Montreux casino during a Frank Zappa concert in 1971.

Despite heart surgery some six years ago, Nobs had stayed on as festival director, a position he shared during the 1990s with American producer Quincy Jones who returns each year from Los Angeles to introduce new talent and refers to Montreux as the "Rolls-Royce of festivals".

Nobs often joined musicians on stage, playing harmonica, sometimes accompanied by his St. Bernard dogs.

The 47th edition is scheduled for July 5-20.

(Reporting By Katharina Bart and Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Paul Casciato)

Algerian special forces stormed the plant on Saturday to end the four-day siege, moving in to thwart what government officials said was a plot by the Islamist militants to blow up the complex and kill all their hostages with mines sown throughout the site.

The government said after the assault that at least 32 extremists and 23 hostages were killed. Then, on Sunday, Algerian bomb squads sent in to blow up or defuse the explosives found 25 bodies, said the security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

"These bodies are difficult to identify. They could be the bodies of foreign hostages or Algerians or terrorists," the official said.

In addition, a wounded Romanian who had been evacuated died, raising the overall death toll to at least 81.

"Now, of course, people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched a vicious and cowardly attack," British Prime Minister David Cameron said. Three Britons were killed and another three were feared dead.

The dead were also known to include American, Filipino and French workers. Algerian authorities said 685 of their citizens, the backbone of the workforce, escaped without saying how many may have died. More than two dozen foreigners were unaccounted for.

It was unclear whether anyone was rescued in the final assault on the complex, which is run by the Algerian state oil company along with BP and Norway's Statoil.

Authorities said the bloody takeover was carried out Wednesday by 32 men from six countries, under the command from afar of the one-eyed Algerian bandit Moktar Belmoktar, founder of the Masked Brigade, based in neighboring Mali. The attacking force called itself "Those Who Sign in Blood."

The militants initially said the operation was payback for French military intervention in neighboring Mali, where al-Qaida-linked rebels are on the march, but later they said it was two months in the planning, long before France sent in troops.

Armed with heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, missiles and grenades, the militants singled out foreign workers at the plant, killing some of them on the spot and attaching explosive belts to others.

Algeria's tough and uncompromising response to the crisis was typical of its take-no-prisoners approach in confronting terrorists, favoring military action over negotiation. Algerian military forces, backed by attack helicopters, launched two assaults on the plant, the first one on Thursday.

The militants had "decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages," Algerian Communications Minister Mohamed Said said in a state radio interview.

The Masked Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack in the name of al-Qaida, according to a video obtained by a Mauritania-based website that sometimes carries messages of jihadists.

An audio recording of Algerian security forces speaking with the head of the kidnappers, Abdel Rahman al-Nigiri, on the second day of the drama indicated the hostage-takers were trying to organize a prisoner swap.

"You see our demands are so easy, so easy if you want to negotiate with us," al-Nigiri said in the recording broadcast by Algerian television. "We want the prisoners you have, the comrades who were arrested and imprisoned 15 years ago. We want 100 of them."

In another phone call, al-Nigiri said that half the militants had been killed by the Algerian army on Thursday and that he was ready to blow up the remaining hostages if security forces attacked again.

SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors videos from radicals, posted one showing al-Nigiri with what appeared to be an explosive belt around his waist.

The Algerians' use of forced raised an international outcry from some countries worried about their citizens.

But French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Sunday on French television: "The terrorists ... they're the ones to blame."

David Plouffe, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said that al-Qaida and al-Qaida-affiliated groups remain a threat in North Africa and other parts of the world, and that the U.S. is determined to help other countries destroy those networks.

Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Plouffe said the tragedy in Algeria shows once again "that all across the globe countries are threatened by terrorists who will use civilians to try and advance their twisted and sick agenda."

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Elaine Ganley and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.