ALGIERS: The bodies of 25 hostages seized by Islamists were found on Sunday inside a remote gas plant in the Algerian Sahara desert, media said a day after special forces swooped to end a deadly 72-hour stand-off.

Citing security sources, Anis Rahmani, director of the private television channel Ennahar, told AFP the army discovered "the bodies of 25 hostages" as they sought to secure the sprawling site.

But a definitive final toll remains unclear.

Popular French-language daily El Watan said, citing security sources, that "30 other bodies," of foreign and Algerian hostages, as well as soldiers, had been found by the special forces at the gas complex.

The discovery came in addition to the preliminary official death toll, the paper said, adding it "confirmed" comments made earlier by Communications Minister Mohamed Said, who warned of the number rising.

"I fear that it (the toll) may be revised upward," after at least 23 foreigners and Algerians, mostly hostages, were killed during the four-day hostage crisis, Said told a radio station.