Five hostages - believed to include Japanese nationals - are still unaccounted for.
The four released hostages - Mr Lemacon's wife Chloe, their three-year-old son Colin, and two other adults - are due to arrive in Paris on Sunday, he said.
Four of them are still being held - along with three other French hostages - and it is believed they could be in the north of Mali close to where French troops are battling al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Mohamed Abdulrahman, director of the maritime force that led the mission, said Monday that the rescued hostages -- who hailed from Yemen, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Sudan and the Philippines -- were in good health at a military base in Puntland, a semiautonomous region of Somalia.
CNN: Ship crew held for 1,000 days rescued off coast of Yemen
"When you have people taken hostage in such large numbers by terrorists with such cold determination and ready to kill those hostages - as they did - Algeria has an approach which to me, as I see it, is the most appropriate because there could be no negotiation, " he told journalists.
Seven hostages were killed by their captors during a final raid by Algerian troops - at least 23 hostages and 32 hostage-takers died in the four-day stand-off, Algerian officials say.
The visit comes amid reports that the former al-Qaeda leader said to have ordered January's attack on an Algerian gas plant - where at least 37 hostages were killed - has been killed by Chadian forces in Mali.
In Tuesday's video, the camera zoomed in for a close look at each passport, which indicated three of the hostages were teenagers -- 17, 18 and 19 years old.
At the end of November, Colombian officials released newly seized videos of FARC-held hostages, including images of Ms. Betancourt and three U.S. defense contractors.
On Saturday, the Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera broadcast video of the hostages with their abductors giving the initial 48-hour deadline for their demands to be met.
But the Iran-Contra scandal - revelations that the US had been covertly selling arms to Iran in the hope of securing the release of hostages held in Lebanon - caused friction between the US and Baghdad.
The president succumbed to this brinkmanship, saying he could not allow the Republicans' hostages, meaning middle-class taxpayers, to be harmed: a far cry from Bill Clinton's facing down of Newt Gingrich which led to the government shutdown of 1995.
Refugee camps close to the frontier became favourite targets for cross-border raids by Sierra Leonean rebels, attacking rival rebel groups, seeking supplies and hostages, and forcing the able-bodied to join their ranks.
The French foreign minister has met the families of many of the hostages to keep them up-to-date.
There have been cases in which kidnappers have instilled such fear of reprisal in their victims -- by making all pay painfully for the transgressions of one -- that the hostages wind up essentially forced to control each other.
Algerian military forces were surrounding the building holding the hostage-takers and the hostages, Qabliyeh said.
Advani's statements were contradicted by Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav, who said that initially the hijackers were so inadequately armed - they had pistols and knives - that even the hostages "could have overpowered" them.
They formed a University of Utah spinoff company, Xandem Technology LLC, which is commercializing the wireless networks for use as motion detectors for burglar alarm systems, to help police locate hostages and even to alert out-of-town, vacationing parents if a crowd of teenagers is partying at their home during their absence.
ENGADGET: Researchers use wireless network to monitor breathing, could save lives
And a few days ago, the Muslim Scholars Association specifically mentioned these hostages who are part of the Christian peace-makers teams and asked for the release.
The drama ended on Dec. 31 when New Delhi freed three high-profile guerrillas in exchange for 155 hostages.
La Stampa says Mr Berlusconi has dispatched his diplomatic adviser Gianni Castellaneta to Iraq to co-ordinate efforts to have the other hostages released.
The camera zoomed in for a close look at each passport which indicated three of the hostages were teenagers, 17, 18 and 19-years-old, respectively.
Istanbul (CNN) -- Kurdish rebels handed over eight Turkish hostages to a Turkish delegation in northern Iraq on Wednesday, a lawmaker from the delegation told CNN.
In Lebanon, it was possible for me to meet face-to-face with the capturers of Western hostages, and I was the only person from the West to be able to do that.
Some foreign hostages were killed when forces raided the southeast Algerian natural-gas facility, called In Amenas, an Algerian government official confirmed.
At least 48 hostages are now thought to have died in a four-day siege at an Algerian gas plant, as reports say that 25 bodies found at the complex on Sunday were all those of captives.
"Algeria's not a country that would feel comfortable relying on foreign security forces to help liberate the hostages, and that's because of this deep-seated feeling that there should be no foreign military presence in the country, " said Robert Parks, director of the Centre for North African Studies in Algeria.
At a third stand-off, at a Jewish centre, seven hostages had been released, a security official said.
Johnny Isakson, R-Georgia, is pushing legislation to get the former hostages financial reward in a different way.
South Korea, meanwhile, pleaded with the international community to set aside the normal practice of refusing to negotiate with hostage-takers, and relatives of some of the remaining hostages appealed for U.S. help in freeing their loved ones.
应用推荐