A US military aircraft has evacuated some of the foreign hostages freed from an Algerian gas plant for medical treatment, a defense official said.
"We've confirmed this morning there was a C-130 that left with some medical patients on the flight. There were no Americans on that flight," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
The official could not say how many passengers were flown out of Algeria, details of their nationalities or their injuries.
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The Pentagon plans a second medical evacuation using a C-17 transport plane but the number of passengers or nationalities was uncertain, he added.
The fate of foreign hostages held at the remote Algerian gas plant remained unclear Friday, with their Islamist captors demanding a prisoner swap and an end to a French military intervention in Mali.
The Al-Qaeda-linked gunmen, cited by Mauritania's ANI news agency, said they still held seven foreigners at the site deep in the Sahara desert near the border with Libya.
An Algerian security official put their number at 10.
An Algerian military assault to rescue the hostages from the site has come under mounting international criticism.
An Algerian security official said the operation left 12 hostages dead as well as 18 kidnappers.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said a Frenchman had been killed in the operation.
US officials said contradictory reports made it difficult to confirm the American casualty toll from the hostage crisis.
