LOS ANGELES: Disgraced US cyclist Lance Armstrong said in an interview aired Friday that he wants to take part in competitive sports again, even after being banned for doping and stripped of his honors.
"Hell, yes. I'm a competitor. It's what I've done my whole life. I love to train. I love to race," Armstrong told Oprah Winfrey. "Not the Tour de France, but there's a lot of other things I could do. I deserve to be punished. I'm not sure that I deserve a death penalty."
- AFP
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- After three days of chaos, drama and an unknown number of deaths, Algerian special forces troops were holding their fire Saturday in the hostage crisis at a gas facility in the nation's remote eastern desert.
Survivors described harrowing escapes from Islamic militants who attacked the site early Wednesday. Some invented disguises, others sneaked to safety with locals, and at least one ran for his life with plastic explosives strapped around his neck.
Yet others didn't make it -- either because they were killed or were still being held.
Algerian troops staged a military offensive that some nations criticized as endangering the lives of the hostages.
On Friday evening, they were trying a different tack, the state-run Algerian Press Service reported.
"The special forces ... are still seeking a peaceful settlement before neutralizing the terrorist group currently entrenched in the refinery, and free a group of hostages who are still detained," it said.
It was not clear how many hostages were seized by the Islamist militants and how many were being held. Thursday's military operation ended with 650 hostages -- including 100 foreigners -- freed, while at least 12 Algerian and foreign workers were killed, the Algerian Press Service reported in what it said was a "provisional toll."
In addition, 18 of the attackers were "neutralized," APS said.
The dead include one American, identified as Frederick Buttaccio, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, as well as one French and a Briton.
At least 30 foreign workers were unaccounted for, according to the official media report.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday that "significantly" fewer than 30 of his countrymen remained hostage. There could be as few as three Americans still being held, two U.S. officials said earlier this week.
The fate of eight workers with Norway's Statoil, some of them Norwegians, was unclear, the company said. The same was true for the 14 Japanese unaccounted for, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in Tokyo. And Malaysia's state-run news agency, citing its foreign ministry, reported Thursday two of its citizens were held captive.
A spokesman for Moktar Belmoktar, a veteran jihadist who leads the Brigade of the Masked Ones -- a militant group associated with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb -- reportedly offered to free U.S. hostages in exchange for two prisoners.
The prisoners are Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who orchestrated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman jailed in the United States on terrorism charges, the spokesman said in an interview with a private Mauritanian news agency.
Asked Friday about the offer, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland rejected it, restating U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorists.
Opinion: Algeria situation is a wake-up call for the U.S.
"This is an act of terror," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday. "The terrorists ... are the ones who have assaulted this facility (and took) hostage Algerians and others (from) around the world who were going about their daily business."
A dangerous escape
The incident began when the militants -- apparently angry about Algeria's support in a rout of their comrades in neighboring Mali -- targeted the gas field, which is operated by Algeria's state oil company in partnership with foreign companies.
At the start of the siege, the militants gathered the Westerners into a group and tied them up, survivors said.
The kidnappers were equipped with AK-47 rifles and put explosives-laden vests on some hostages, a U.S. State Department official said.
Some escaped by disguising themselves, according to Regis Arnoux, who runs a catering firm at the site and had spoken with some of his 150 employees who were freed. He said they all were "traumatized."
Some Algerian hostages were free to walk around the site but not to leave, Arnoux said. Still, a number of them escaped, he said.
As the Algerian military launched its operation Thursday, the militants moved some hostages, according to one survivor's account.
With plastic explosives strapped around their necks, these captives were blindfolded and gagged before being loaded into five Jeeps, according to the brother of former hostage Stephen McFaul.
McFaul, with the explosives still around his neck, escaped after the vehicle he was in -- one of several targeted by Algerian fighters -- crashed, his brother told CNN from Belfast, Northern Ireland.
"I haven't seen my mother move as fast in all my life, and my mother smile as much, hugging each other," Brian McFaul said upon his family hearing his brother was safe. "... You couldn't describe the feeling."
McFaul said the other four Jeeps were "wiped out" in an explosion, and his brother believed the hostages inside did not survive.
Nations mobilize to help citizens caught up in crisis
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, speaking in London, said the United States was working round the clock to ensure the safe return of its citizens.
Those freed include some Americans, while other U.S. nationals were unaccounted for, U.S. officials said.
The United States was evacuating 10 to 20 people caught up in the crisis, a U.S. defense official told CNN on Friday. They were to be taken to U.S. facilities in Europe, where their condition would be assessed, the official said.
Britain has sent trauma experts and consular affairs officers who can issue emergency passports to a location about 450 kilometers (280 miles) away from the plant, a Foreign Office official said, so they'll be "as close" as possible to the scene.
BP, which helps operate the gas field, said Friday that a "small number of BP employees" were unaccounted for. The same held for some workers with Statoil, though nine others with the company -- including five who escaped -- were safe. Four Norwegians and a Canadian with that oil firm were in an airport hotel in Bergen, Norway, after being taken from Algeria, Statoil spokeswoman Sissel Rinde said.
Both BP and Statoil -- two of the foreign companies with In Amenas operations -- were pulling their personnel out of Algeria, which is Africa's largest natural gas producer and a major supplier of natural gas to Europe.
BP said it had flown 11 of its employees and several hundred staffers from other companies out of the North African country Thursday and was planning another flight Friday.
Mark Cobb, a Texan who has a LinkedIn profile identifying him as general manager for a BP joint venture out of In Amenas, told CNN he had escaped on the first day and was safe.
A U.S. military C-130 plane flew 12 people who were wounded in the ordeal out of Algeria on Friday, a U.S. defense official said. None of them were Americans, though efforts continue to evacuate freed Americans.
There is so much conflicting information on safety of the hostages.
Yoshihide Suga, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary
Three workers for a Japanese engineering company that was working on the site have been contacted and are safe, said Takeshi Endo, a senior manager for JGC Corp. But the company had not been able to contact 14 others, he said.
France's foreign ministry said that, in addition to one death, three of its citizens were rescued.
Japan 'terribly disappointed' in Algerian military operation
Algeria faces tough questions from governments of the kidnapped nationals over its handling of the crisis. Neither the United States nor Britain, for instance, was told in advance about Algeria's military operation Thursday.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said his nation's officials had urged Algeria's government to avoid exposing hostages to danger. "We are terribly disappointed about the Algerians' military operation," Suga said.
Japanese Vice Minister Shunichi Suzuki summoned Algeria's ambassador Friday to express Tokyo's concern.
U.S. officials made a similar plea to the Algerians, urging them to be cautious and make the hostages' safety their first priority, an official in President Barack Obama's administration said.
A senior U.S. official said American officials did not trust information they got from the Algerians, "because we hear one thing and then we hear something else."
But Algeria acted out of a sense of urgency after noticing hostages being moved toward "a neighboring country," where kidnappers could use them "as a means of blackmail with criminal intent," Communications Minister Mohamed Said told state television.
Algerian troops fired on at least two SUVs trying to leave the facility, Algerian radio said. And a reporter saw clashes near the site, according to the Algerian Press Service and radio reports.
"There were a number of dead and injured, we don't have a final figure," the communications minister said of casualties following the operation.
Belmoktar, the man behind the group claiming responsibility for the attack and kidnappings, is known for seizing hostages.
French counterterrorism forces have long targeted Belmoktar, an Algerian who lost an eye fighting in Afghanistan in his teens. Libyan sources said he spent several months in Libya in 2011, exploring cooperation with local jihadist groups and securing weapons.
The militants said they carried out the operation because Algeria allowed French forces to use its airspace in attacking Islamist militants in Mali. Media in the region reported the attackers issued a statement demanding an end to "brutal aggression on our people in Mali" and cited "blatant intervention of the French crusader forces in Mali."
Latest on the Mali situation
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the Algerian hostage situation "confirms the gravity of the terrorist threat and the necessity to fight it with a determined and united front."
That sentiment was echoed by Clinton, the top U.S. diplomat. She stressed the need for a concerted, international effort to address terrorist and other threats around Africa.
"It is absolutely essential that, while we work to resolve this particular terrible situation, we continue to broaden and deepen our counterterrorism cooperation," she said Friday. "It is not only cooperation with Algeria, it is international cooperation against a common threat."
CNN's Barbara Starr, Laura Smith-Spark, Mike Mount, Joe Sutton, Elwyn Lopez, Frederik Pleitgen, Dan Rivers, Mitra Mobasherat, Saskya Vandoorne, Laura Perez Maestro, Junko Ogura, Dheepthi Namasivayam, Saad Abedine, Elise Labott and Tim Lister contributed to this report, as did journalists Peter Taggart from Belfast and Said Ben Ali from Algiers.
Updated at 6:41 p.m. ET
An American in the Algerian hostage standoff in the Algerian desert has been killed, CBS News has learned.
Fredrick Buttaccio from Katy, Texas near Houston, was an employee of the oil company BP. It is unknown how he died, but U.S. government sources tell CBS News his body has been recovered and his family has been notified.
Meanwhile, a U.S. military plane has landed in Amenas, Algeria to pick up nine passengers - one American and eight foreign nationals - to be transported to Landstuhl, Germany, a military source told CBS News.
The flight, which contains an air medical evacuation team, was expected to have departed Algeria by Thursday afternoon.
It's not clear exactly how many total casualties have resulted from the fighting, but Algeria's state news agency reported that 12 foreign and Algerian workers had died since the start of the operation, citing an unidentified security source. That information could not be independently confirmed.
As CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reported, the freed hostages told of how they fled in the confusion as the Algerian army attacked. Many were injured, some badly. One person said: "It happened so fast."
But it hasn't ended quickly, reported Phillips. The Algerians say they've freed nearly a hundred foreigners. And as they were being bused away, many thanked their rescuers. "They kept us all nice and safe and fought off the bad guys," said another person.
Also, more detail of the ordeal has emerged with the freed hostages. Some say they had explosives hung around their necks as they were placed in a convoy of vehicles by their captors. When the cars began to move, the Algerian Army units surrounding the site feared the captives were being taken out of the compound -- and opened fire.
The al Qaeda-linked Masked Battalio, led from afar by Moktar Belmoktar, may still be holding some of the roughly 30 foreigners still unaccounted for.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not get into specifics on the crisis Friday afternoon, but described it as an "extremely difficult and dangerous situation" and called on the Algerian government to "preserve innocent life" in their efforts to fully resolve the crisis. Clinton spoke after the State Department said that Americans were still being held hostage.
The desert siege erupted Wednesday when the militants attempted to hijack two buses at the plant, were repulsed, and then seized the sprawling refinery, which is 800 miles south of Algiers. They had claimed the attack came in retaliation for France's recent military intervention against Islamist rebels in neighboring Mali, but security experts have said it must have taken weeks of planning to hit the remote site.
Since then, Algeria's government has kept a tight grip on information about the siege.
The militants had seized hundreds of workers from 10 nations at Algeria's remote Ain Amenas natural gas plant. The overwhelming majority were Algerian and were freed almost immediately.
Algerian forces retaliated Thursday by storming the plant in an attempted rescue operation that left leaders around the world expressing strong concerns about the hostages' safety.
Militants claimed 35 hostages died on Thursday when Algerian military helicopters opened fire as the Islamists transported the hostages around the gas plant. While Algerian officials acknowledged some hostage deaths, the number could not be independently confirmed.
On Friday, trapped in the main refinery area, the militants offered to trade two American hostages for two prominent terror figures jailed in the United States. Those the militants sought included Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh who was convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks and considered the spiritual leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
But U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said there would be "no place to hide" for anyone who looks to attack the United States.
"Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge, not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere," Panetta said Friday.
Workers kidnapped by the militants came from around the world -- Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians, Japanese, Algerians.
A high-resolution satellite image of the Amenas gas facility taken on Dec 7, 2012.
World leaders have expressed strong concerns in the past few days about how Algeria was handing the situation and its apparent reluctance to communicate.
Terrorized hostages from Ireland and Norway trickled out of the plant. BP, which jointly operates the plant, said it had begun to evacuate employees from Algeria.
A U.S. military C-130 transport plane flew a number of people including former Ain Amenas hostages from the Algerian capital of Algiers to a U.S. facility in Europe, a U.S. official said. He declined to be specific about the destination, their nationalities or the extent of the wounds that he said some had.
A flood of foreign energy workers were being evacuated from the North African nation amid security concerns.
BP evacuated one U.S. citizen along with other foreign energy workers from Algeria to Mallorca and then London. The oil giant said three flights left Algeria on Thursday, carrying 11 BP employees and several hundred energy workers from other companies.
A fourth plane was taking more people out of the country on Friday, BP said.
Lance Armstrong, 41, said tonight that the lowest point in his fall from grace and the top of the cycling world came when his cancer charity, Livestrong, asked him to consider stepping down.
After the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released a report in October 2012 alleging Armstrong doped throughout his reign as Tour de France champion, Armstrong said a second installment of an interview with Oprah Winfrey, his major sponsors -- including Nike, Anheuser Busch and Trek -- called one by one to end their endorsement contracts with him.
"Everybody out," he said. "Still not the most humbling moment."
Then came the call from Livestrong, the charity he founded at age 25 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
"The story was getting out of control, which was my worst nightmare," he said. "I had this place in my mind that they would all leave. The one I didn't think would leave was the foundation.
"That was most humbling moment," he said.
Armstrong first stepped down as chairman of the board for the charity before being asked to end his association with the charity entirely. Livestrong is now run independently of Armstrong.
"I don't think it was 'We need you to step down,' but, 'We need you to consider stepping down for yourself,'" he said, recounting the call. "I had to think about that a lot. None of my kids, none of my friends have said, 'You're out,' and the foundation was like my sixth child. To make that decision, to step aside, that was big."
George Burns/Harpo Studios, Inc.
In the first part of the interview, broadcast Thursday, Armstrong admitted for the first time that his decade-long dominance of cycling and seven wins in the Tour de France were owed, in part, to performance-enhancing drugs and oxygen-boosting blood transfusions.
He told Winfrey that he was taking the opportunity to confess to everything he had done wrong, including for years angrily denying claims that he had doped.
READ MORE: Armstrong Admits to Doping
WATCH: Armstrong's Many Denials Caught on Tape
READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions
Armstrong said in the interview that he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the tour again in 2010.
Investigators familiar with Armstrong's case, however, told ABC News today that Armstrong did not come completely clean to Winfrey, and that they believed he doped in 2009.
They said that Armstrong's blood values at the 2009 race showed clear blood manipulation consistent with two transfusions. Armstrong's red blood cell count suddenly went up at these points, even though the number of baby red blood cells did not.
Investigators said that was proof that he received a transfusion of mature red blood cells.
READ MORE: Lance Armstrong May Have Lied to Winfrey: Investigators
If Armstrong lied about the 2009 race, it could be to protect himself criminally, investigators said.
Federal authorities looking to prosecute criminal cases will look back at the "last overt act" in which the crime was committed, they explained. If Armstrong doped in 2005 but not 2009, the statute of limitations may have expired on potential criminal activity.
The sources noted that there is no evidence right now that a criminal investigation will be reopened. Armstrong is facing at least three civil suits.
LOS ANGELES: Lance Armstrong admitted his seven Tour de France titles were fuelled by an array of drugs, reversing years of denials in a televised interview with Oprah Winfrey broadcast Thursday.
Attempting to explain his drug-tainted past, Armstrong sat down with Winfrey for his first interview since being stripped last year of his record seven Tour titles and banned from sport for life.
It was recorded on Monday in Austin, Texas, and was to be aired in two segments on Thursday and Friday on Winfrey's OWN television channel.
"I know the truth. The truth isn't what was out there, the truth isn't what I said... This story was so perfect for so long... you overcome the disease, you win the Tour de France seven times, you have a happy marriage, you have children. I mean, it's just this mythic, perfect story," Armstrong said.
"And it wasn't true."
In an opening series of "yes" or "no" questions, Armstrong admitted using blood-boosting EPO, blood doping transfusions and testosterone or human growth hormone.
Armstrong told Winfrey he didn't believe it was possible to win the Tour in the years he raced without doping, and challenged the characterisation of the doping program on his US Postal Service team as the most sophisticated ever.
Hours before the kickoff, Armstrong saw another accolade withdrawn as the International Olympic Committee said it had asked him to return the cycling time-trial bronze medal he won in 2000.
The International Cycling Union last year upheld the US Anti-Doping Agency's ban of Armstrong, and the revocation of his cycling results from August 1998, but the IOC waited for three weeks to see if Armstrong planned an appeal.
While Winfrey confirmed on Tuesday reports that Armstrong had admitted using banned performance enhancers in their talk, little else was known of what he would reveal.
Speculation swirled as to whether he had implicated others -- notably members of the sport's world governing body -- amid allegations of complicity and cover-up.
The difficulty of untangling the doping web in cycling was again clear when the IOC's move recalled the 2000 Olympic time-trial medallists.
Abraham Olano of Spain, who was fourth, could inherit the bronze after finishing fourth in a race won by Armstrong's ex-US Post Service team-mate Viasheslav Ekimov, with Germany's Jan Ullrich taking silver.
Ekimov is now general manager of the Katusha cycling team that were dropped from the elite ProTeam list for this season because of their ambivalent stance on doping, and Ullrich eventually served a two-year ban for doping.
Some have speculated that Armstrong might attempt to rationalize doping as standard procedure in the years of his cycling career.
Certainly his admission, and his choice of the famously sympathetic Winfrey as confessor, are an about face after years of aggressive denials and often vitriolic attacks on those who doubted him.
"No one could have imagined only a few weeks ago that Lance Armstrong would make his confession publicly, that he would confess in public to having been doped," Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme told reporters in Paris.
"It's obviously something very important but I can't say more than that ... For us, Lance Armstrong is already in the past."
This week's exercise, however, is about the future, with Armstrong reportedly seeking a way back into sports and those in cycling wondering just who will be implicated in his revelations.
-AFP/fl
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- British Prime Minister David Cameron warned his compatriots to prepare for "bad news ahead" related to kidnapping of dozens of hostages at a gas facility in Algeria.
Nearly 600 workers and four foreign nationals -- two Scots, a Kenyan and a French citizen -- were free by late Thursday after an operation launched by Algeria's military, according to the state-run Algerian Press Service.
Some hostages were still presumably being held, and the crisis is far from over.
"It is a fluid situation, it is ongoing," Cameron told the Reuters news agency. "But I think we should be prepared for the possibility of further bad news, very difficult news, in this extremely difficult situation."
The Algerian military operation was over by Thursday evening, according to the Algerian Press Service. At that point, there was no immediate indication as to how many had been killed or injured, how many hostages were still being held, what their condition was or if future action would be taken.
The military operation led to numerous casualties, though the exact number wasn't known, APS reported. Two people -- an Algerian and British national -- died when the kidnappers attacked Wednesday, according to the same news agency. Cameron acknowledged, in his Reuters interview, that a British citizen "very sadly died."
While the Algerian military raid wrapped up on Thursday, a senior U.S. official stressed later that night that more military operations could be coming.
"There are still hostages, and there are still terrorists," the official said. "So tomorrow is another day."
Algerians and foreign workers were taken hostage at the gas plant in Wednesday's assault, apparently in direct response to France's offensive in nearby Mali. The gas field is 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of the Libyan border and 1,300 kilometers (about 800 miles) from the Algerian capital, Algiers.
The kidnappers have AK-47 rifles and put explosives-laden vests on some of the hostages, a U.S. State Department official said. It is not clear whether the hostage-takers wore the suicide vests when they staged the action, another U.S. official said.
Islamists take foreign hostages in attack on Algerian oil field
The attackers put the number of hostages at "more than 40," including seven Americans, two French, two British and other Europeans. Another Islamist group told the Mauritanian News Agency there were 41 "Westerners."
The APS, though, reported that just over 20 foreign nationals were being held.
Officials from Norway, the United States, Japan and Great Britain have said some of their nationals are among the hostages.
Nine Norwegian employees of Statoil are unaccounted for, while five Norwegian nationals -- as well as three Algerians -- who work for the company are safe, the company said in a statement.
CNN affiliate BFM-TV reported that a French citizen, who is a nurse who worked on the site, was recently freed. CNN could not independently confirm the report.
Former hostage Stephen McFaul had plastic explosives strapped around his neck, duct tape over his mouth and rope around his hands, his brother Brian McFaul told CNN from Belfast.
McFaul made a break for freedom after the vehicle he was in -- one of several targeted by Algerian fighters -- crashed, with the explosives still around his neck.
"The joy was unreal," Brian McFaul said upon hearing his brother was safe. "I haven't seen my mother move as fast in all my life, and my mother smile as much, hugging each other ... You couldn't describe the feeling."
An unspecified number of Americans are among the hostages held by terrorists at BP's In Amenas facility in Algeria, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. There could be as few as three American hostages, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.
One of the kidnapped Americans is a Texas man, a family member told CNN.
By Thursday night, some Americans had been freed and spoke with family members back home, while others remained unaccounted for, U.S. officials said.
"This incident will be resolved -- we hope -- with a minimum loss of life," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "But when you deal with these relentless terrorists, life is not in any way precious to them."
Heavy clashes and drones
The man behind the group claiming responsibility for the attack and kidnappings is a veteran jihadist known for seizing hostages.
Moktar Belmoktar, an Algerian who lost an eye fighting in Afghanistan in his teens, has long been a target of French counterterrorism forces. Libyan sources said he spent several months in Libya in 2011, exploring cooperation with local jihadist groups and securing weapons.
Algerian forces launched their operation upon noticing the hostages being moved toward "a neighboring country," where kidnappers could use them "as a means of blackmail with criminal intent," Algerian Communications Minister Mohamed Said said Thursday on state TV.
Algerian troops fired on at least two SUVs trying to leave the kidnapping site, Algerian radio said, citing local sources. And an Algerian reporter saw heavy clashes near the site, APS and radio reports said.
"There were a number of dead and injured, we don't have a final figure," Said said.
An unarmed Predator drone has flown over the plant to gather intelligence, a U.S. official said Thursday. Satellite imagery was taken previously.
Earlier, Algeria's state media reported that all Algerian nationals who had been held hostage were free: some had fled, while others were released. The hostages still detained are foreigners, Algerian Interior Minister Dahou Ould Kablia said.
In addition to the hundreds of freed workers, 30 Algerian workers escaped -- recovered by helicopters flying over the site -- according to the GPS report.
Meanwhile, two oil companies that operated at the site -- BP and Statoil -- are pulling all of their non-essential personnel from Algeria.
"Our focus is 100 percent on the safety and welfare of those people and their families, and we are now beginning a staged and planned reduction in non-essential workforce on a temporary basis, pulling them out of the country," said BP Vice President Peter Maher from London's Gatwick Airport, where a chartered flight from Algeria was set to arrive Thursday night.
Militants blame Algeria for letting French use its air space
The militants said they carried out the operation because Algeria allowed French forces to use its air space in attacking Islamist militants in Mali. Media in the region reported that the attackers issued a statement demanding an end to "brutal aggression on our people in Mali" and cited "blatant intervention of the French crusader forces in Mali."
The fallout escalated after rebels kidnapped the Westerners, dragging governments beyond Africa into the region's conflicts and insecurity.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in Europe meeting with NATO allies, called the hostage-taking "a terrorist act."
Japan and the United Kingdom sent officials to Algeria to get the latest information. French President Francois Hollande earlier confirmed the presence of French citizens on site but would not say whether any were hostages.
Cameron -- who canceled a Friday speech in the Netherlands -- talked with U.S. President Barack Obama about the situation Thursday, according to a Downing Street statement.
Before Algeria launched its military operation, U.S. officials urged the Algerians to be cautious and make the hostages' safety their first priority, an Obama administration official said.
However, Algerian government officials did not tell their U.S. counterparts in advance about their military raid, according to the official.
A senior U.S. official said, at this point, the United States doesn't trust the information it is getting from the Algerians, "because we hear one thing and then we hear something else."
There are also fears that the tactics used by the Algerian forces may have put hostages in jeopardy, though the official acknowledged they could have hit even harder.
"In all fairness, they could have ended it today," the senior U.S. official said. "They haven't used all the severeness they could. They know hostages are left."
CNN's Joe Sterling and Greg Botelho wrote this story from Atlanta. CNN's Elise Labott, David Mattingly, Athena Jones, Barbara Starr, Jethro Mullen, Tim Lister and Faith Karimi contributed to this report, as did journalists Peter Taggert from Belfast Said Ben Ali contributed from Algiers.
SOUTH BEND, Ind. Not once but twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never even existed, Notre Dame All-American linebacker Manti Te'o perpetuated the heartbreaking story about her death.
An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a Web interview on Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 11. He and the university said Wednesday that he learned on Dec. 6 that it was all a hoax, that not only wasn't she dead, she wasn't real.
On Thursday, a day after Te'o's inspiring, playing-through-heartache story was exposed as a bizarre lie, Te'o and Notre Dame faced questions from sports writers and fans about whether he really was duped, as he claimed, or whether he and the university were complicit in the hoax and misled the public, perhaps to improve his chances of winning the Heisman.
Yahoo sports columnist Dan Wetzel said the case has "left everyone wondering whether this was really the case of a naJive football player done wrong by friends or a fabrication that has yet to play to its conclusion."
Gregg Doyel, national columnist for CBSSports.com, was more direct.
"Nothing about this story has been comprehensible, or logical, and that extends to what happens next," he wrote. "I cannot comprehend Manti Te'o saying anything that could make me believe he was a victim."
On Wednesday, Te'o and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the player was drawn into a virtual romance with a woman who used the phony name Lennay Kekua, and was fooled into believing she died of leukemia in September. They said his only contact with the woman was via the Internet and telephone.
Te'o also lost his grandmother — for real — the same day his girlfriend supposedly died, and his role in leading Notre Dame to its best season in decades endeared him to fans and put him at the center of college football's biggest feel-good story of the year.
Relying on information provided by Te'o's family members, the South Bend Tribune reported in October that Te'o and Kekua first met, in person, in 2009, and that the two had also gotten together in Hawaii, where Te'o grew up.
Te'o never mentioned a face-to-face meeting with Kekua in public comments reviewed by the AP. And an AP review of media reports about Te'o since Sept. 13 turned up no instance in which he directly confirmed or denied those stories — until Wednesday.
Among the outstanding questions Thursday: Why didn't Te'o ever clarify the nature of his relationship as the story took on a life of its own?
Te'o's agent, Tom Condon, said the athlete had no plans to make any public statements Thursday in Bradenton, Fla., where he has been training with other NFL hopefuls at the IMG Academy.
Notre Dame said Te'o found out that Kekau was not a real person through a phone call he received at an awards ceremony in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 6. He told Notre Dame coaches about the situation on Dec. 26.
The AP's media review turned up two instances during that gap when the football star mentioned Kekua in public.
Te'o was in New York for the Heisman presentation on Dec. 8 and, during an interview before the ceremony that ran on the WSBT.com, the website for a South Bend TV station, Te'o said: "I mean, I don't like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer. So I've really tried to go to children's hospitals and see, you know, children."
In a story that ran in the Daily Press of Newport News, Va., on Dec. 11, Te'o recounted why he played a few days after he found out Kekau died in September, and the day she was supposedly buried.
"She made me promise, when it happened, that I would stay and play," he said.
On Wednesday, Swarbrick said Notre Dame did not go public with its findings sooner because it expected the Te'o family to come forward first. But Deadspin.com broke the story Wednesday.
Reporters were turned away Thursday at the main gate of IMG's sprawling, secure complex. Te'o remained on the grounds, said a person familiar with situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because neither Te'o nor IMG authorized the release of the information.
"This whole thing is so nutsy that I believe it only could have happened at Notre Dame, where mythology trumps common sense on a daily basis. ... Given the choice between reality and fiction, Notre Dame always will choose fiction," sports writer Rick Telander said in the Chicago Sun-Times.
"Which brings me to what I believe is the real reason Te'o and apparently his father, at least went along with this scheme: the Heisman Trophy.
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass blasted both Te'o and Notre Dame.
"When your girlfriend dying of leukemia after suffering a car crash tells you she loves you, even if it might help you win the Heisman Trophy, you check it out," he said.
He said the university's failure to call a news conference and go public sooner means "Notre Dame is complicit in the lie."
"The school fell in love with the Te'o girlfriend myth," he wrote.
Lance Armstrong, formerly cycling's most decorated champion and considered one of America's greatest athletes, confessed to cheating for at least a decade, admitting on Thursday that he owed all seven of his Tour de France titles and the millions of dollars in endorsements that followed to his use of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.
After years of denying that he had taken banned drugs and received oxygen-boosting blood transfusions, and attacking his teammates and competitors who attempted to expose him, Armstrong came clean with Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive interview, confessing to using banned substances for decades.
"I view this situation as one big lie that I repeated a lot of times," he said.
In October, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a report in which 11 former teammates exposed the system with which they and Armstrong received drugs with the knowledge of their coaches and help of team physicians.
READ MORE: Did Doping Cause Armstrong's Cancer?
George Burns/Courtesy of Harpo Studios, Inc./AP Photo
The U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team "ran the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen," USADA said in its report.
Armstrong said he was driven to cheat by a "ruthless desire to win."
He told Winfrey that his competition "cocktail" consisted of EPO, blood transfusions and testosterone, and that he had previously used cortisone.
He said he stopped doping following his 2005 Tour de France victory and did not use banned substances when he placed third in 2009 and entered the race again in 2010.
"It was a mythic perfect story and it wasn't true," Armstrong said of his fairytale story of overcoming testicular cancer to become the most celebrated cyclist in history.
PHOTOS: Olympic Doping Scandals: Past and Present
Armstrong would not name other members of his team who doped, but admitted that as the team's captain he set an example. He admitted he was "a bully" but said there "there was a never a directive," from him that his teammates had to use banned substances.
"At the time it did not feel wrong?" Winfrey asked.
"No," Armstrong said. "Scary."
"Did you feel bad about it?" she asked again.
"No," he said.
Also on Thursday, before the Winfrey interview aired, the International Olympic Committee stripped Armstrong his of 2000 Olympic bronze medal.
READ MORE: 10 Scandalous Public Confessions
LONDON: As the Football Association begins its 150th anniversary year, England manager Roy Hodgson has challenged his players to provide the ultimate celebration by at least putting themselves in contention to end almost half a century without a trophy.
Hodgson is the latest in a string of managers charged with ending England's wait for a first major honour since their lone World Cup final triumph, against the then West Germany at London's Wembley Stadium in 1966.
But after helping the FA launch its landmark birthday on the London site of its first meeting, the current incumbent in the so-called 'impossible job' refused to accept it may take another 50 years to replicate.
"There's always hope," Hodgson insisted. "Hope springs eternal. But what you have to do to win tournaments is make sure you're regularly among the ones who are up there with a possibility of winning.
"You could compare it to someone who is an amateur darts player. The more darts he throws in and around the centre, one day he will get it in the bullseye.
"If he's spreading them around the board your chances will be less than if he's getting them in the 25 circle."
Hodgson took England to the quarter-finals at Euro 2012, only losing on penalties to Italy -- even though his team's performances were often described as limited by many critics who yearn for England to rely more on technique and finesse than just their famous bulldog spirit.
The FA shares the same ambition; which is why it has built a national academy in central England at St George's Park -- a school for coaches where all 24 national teams will also be based.
And although Hodgson knows any rewards from that venture are a long way down the line, he hasn't ruled out a degree of short-term success if England qualify for the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil.
"The first thing we have to do of course is qualify for the tournament," he said. "And then when we qualify it will be important that we give a very good account of ourselves at the World Cup in Brazil. And who knows, once you are there you have a chance of winning it.
"I think we have some very good young players coming into the game playing regularly now and showing that they do have the ability to shoulder the burden."
Hodgson was joined at The FA's anniversary launch by several former England managers including Sven-Goran Eriksson, Terry Venables and Fabio Capello, who left the role in controversial circumstances following a row over a decision to strip John Terry of the England captaincy.
But the Italian was all smiles as he said: "We are all friends now. It is very good to come back and see the people I used to work with. I have no problems with anyone.
"You know I can't talk about what happened with England but I am enjoying my life with Russia and my hope is that we play England in Brazil at the World Cup. That would be very good I think."
FA chairman David Bernstein welcomed Capello's participation by insisting: "Fabio is a man of great dignity and I respect him enormously.
"To see him today (Wednesday) and the warmth he showed, and there was a great deal of warmth when we met each other was really fabulous. It's the way it should be. There were hugs all round."
Meanwhile it emerged the FA, which has already arranged anniversary England friendlies against Brazil, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, was also looking to fit in matches against Argentina and Germany at Wembley in October and November.
-AFP/ac
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o said Wednesday he was the victim of a "sick joke" that had him and legions of fans believing in a "girlfriend" who may never have existed.
Te'o was the subject of an inspirational story that had him overcoming the deaths of his real-life grandmother and his "girlfriend" as his team marched toward the BCS National Championship Game.
Te'o released a statement and Notre Dame held a news conference Wednesday night after the sports website Deadspin published an article that called the girlfriend story a "hoax."
Last September and October, Te'o told interviewers the losses of the women, who reportedly died within hours of each other, inspired him to honor them with sterling play on the field.
"I miss 'em, but I know that I'll see them again one day," he told ESPN.
That and other media reports led to a gripping human interest story of determination. The girlfriend was identified as Lennay Kekua.
Jack Swarbrick, director of athletics at Notre Dame, told reporters that Te'o was the victim of an elaborate hoax. "And he will carry that with him for a while," Swarbrick said.
Notre Dame said the relationship between Te'o and the supposed girlfriend was exclusively online.
As part of the hoax, several meetings were set up, including at Te'o's home in Hawaii, but Kekua never showed, Swarbrick said.
Te'o's father, Brian, told the South Bend (Indiana) Tribune last fall that his son did have the opportunity to meet Lennay.
"They started out as just friends," Brian Te'o said, according to the newspaper. "Every once in a while, she would travel to Hawaii, and that happened to be the time Manti was home, so he would meet with her there. But within the last year, they became a couple."
According to Swarbrick, Te'o in early December received a call from a woman claiming to be his girlfriend and telling him she was not dead. Those calls continued but Te'o did not answer, Swarbrick said.
Te'o's grandmother did in fact die in September, according to Deadspin, but there is no Social Security Administration record of the death of the athlete's supposed girlfriend, described as a Stanford University student.
Stanford University's registrar's office told CNN that it has never had a student registered by Kekua's name or an alternative spelling.
"Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there's no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed," Deadspin contends. "There was no Lennay Kekua."
According to the website, Kekua, 22, had reportedly been in a serious auto accident in California and was later diagnosed with leukemia.
Photographs showing a young woman identified as Kekua in online tributes and news reports actually are photos from social media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua and does not have leukemia, according to Deadspin. The woman never met Te'o, it said.
Your opinion: What do you think?
After Notre Dame upset No. 10 Michigan State on September 15, Te'o told ABC about his late grandmother and girlfriend.
"They were with me. I couldn't do it without them," Te'o said. "I couldn't do it without the support of my family and my girlfriend's family."
"I'm so happy that I had a chance to honor my grandma and my family and my girlfriend," the Heisman Trophy runner-up said. "That's what it's all about, family."
Timothy Burke, co-author of the Deadspin article, told Miami sports radio host Dan Le Batard, "We got an e-mail last week saying something isn't right" with the girlfriend story.
Te'o, the runner-up for the Heisman Trophy, said Wednesday he "developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her."
In his statement reported by ESPN, the star said, "To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating.
"It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life."
Notre Dame said it hired an independent investigative firm to look into the situation.
Swarbrick said the independent investigation found that the perpetrators were involved in "online chatter" indicating that it was a hoax, and Te'o was a victim.
"I will refer you to the documentary 'Catfish,'" the athletic director said. "It's ... about people tricking people online by pretending to be other people."
MTV broadcasts a show about such online trickery.
Swarbrick said he met with Te'o's family two days before Notre Dame played in the January 7 championship game and lost to Alabama. The linebacker is expected to be a first-round pick in the NFL draft this spring.
CNN's Steve Almasy, Amanda Watts and Phil Gast contributed to this report.
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