Three French nationals who were at the site are safe, the foreign ministry has said. One man -- identified as Yann Desjeux -- died after telling the French newspaper Sud Ouest on Thursday that he and 34 other hostages of nine different nationalities were well-treated.

Of the BP employees, 14 are safe, and four BP employees are still missing in Algeria, BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said.

At least one American, identified as Frederick Buttaccio, is among the dead, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. The senior U.S. official told CNN that six freed Americans left Algeria and one remained.

One Romanian lost his life, a spokeswoman for the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNN on Saturday. Four other Romanians were freed.

And there are 14 Japanese unaccounted for, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.

Malaysia's state-run news agency reported Thursday that two of its citizens were held captive.

Dramatic tales of escape from terror

When the crisis began Wednesday, militants gathered the Westerners into a group and tied them up, survivors said. The kidnappers wielded AK-47 rifles and put explosive-laden vests on some hostages, according to a U.S. State Department official.

Some survivors described their harrowing escapes by rigging up disguises, sneaking to safety with locals, and in at least one case, running for his life with plastic explosives strapped around his neck.

That man was Stephen McFaul, who -- according to his brother Brian -- was among a group of hostages who had been blindfolded, gagged and then packed into five Jeeps on Thursday, during Algerian forces' first offensive.

An explosion "wiped out" four of the vehicles, while McFaul's vehicle crashed. He was able to get out and, eventually, contact his family.

"I haven't seen my mother move as fast in all my life, and my mother smile as much, hugging each other," Brian McFaul of Belfast, Northern Ireland, said upon his family hearing his brother was safe. "... You couldn't describe the feeling."

Al Qaeda-linked group offered prisoner-hostage exchange

A spokesman for Moktar Belmoktar, a longtime 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.

Behind the group claiming responsibility for the attack and kidnappings, he is known for seizing hostages and has long been targeted by French counterterrorism forces.

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.

Nuland rejected the offer, restating U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorists.