With the whereabouts of 10 of the 17 Japanese taken hostage at a natural gas complex in Algeria still unknown, the government spent Saturday making desperate but fruitless efforts to gather more information on the situation.
The Liberal Democratic Party administration and Yokohama-based engineering company JGC Corp. confirmed that four more plant workers were safe Friday night, bringing the total to seven.
On Saturday morning, however, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said no verifiable information was available on the remaining 10 and that the government did not have any useful resources in the area.