Hostages held by an al-Qaeda affiliate group in a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital Bamako were freed yesterday after Malian special forces raided the hotel, bringing the eight-hour siege to an end, Malian authorities confirmed.
“All remaining hostages of the Malian siege are now safe and out of the Radisson Blu where they had been held,” Ministerial Adviser Amadou Sangho told French television station BFMTV.
“These people [the captives] have been taken under the wing of the civil authorities,” he said.
Interior Security Minister Col Salif Traoré said three people had been killed and two wounded by the gunmen, who burst through security at the hotel entrance at 7am, spraying the area with gunfire and shouting “God is great” in Arabic.
Reuters, however, quoted a UN official who said peacekeepers saw some 27 bodies on two separate floors of the hotel. The peacekeepers saw 12 corpses in the basement of the hotel and another 15 on the second floor, the official said on condition of anonymity. He added that the UN troops were still helping Malian authorities search the hotel.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the “horrific terrorist attack” and indicated the violence was aimed at destroying peace efforts in the country, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
“The secretary-general deplores any attempt to derail the implementation of the agreement” signed in June between rival factions, said UN spokesman.
Earlier Malian commandos stormed the luxury hotel after jihadist gunmen took 170 people, including many foreigners, hostage in the capital of the former French colony, which has been battling rebels allied to al-Qaeda for several years.
“Security forces are in the process of tracking them down,” Traoré told a news conference following a stand-off of several hours at Bamako’s Radisson Blu.
An African jihadist group affiliated with al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, reports Reuters.
Al-Mourabitoun, a group based in northern Mali and made up mostly of Tuaregs and Arabs, posted a message on Twitter saying it was behind the attack.
The claim could not immediately be verified. Al-Mourabitoun, formed around two years ago and based in the Sahara Desert, is headed by former al-Qaeda fighter Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
Dozens of people were reported to have escaped or been freed earlier during the eight-hour siege. A security source said the gunmen had dug in on the seventh floor of the hotel as special forces advanced on them.
State television showed footage of troops in camouflage fatigues wielding automatic weapons in the lobby of the Radisson Blu, one of Bamako’s posh hotels. In the background, a body lay under a brown blanket at the bottom of a flight of stairs.
Occasional bursts of gunfire were heard as the assailants went through the seven-storey building, room-by-room and floor-by-floor. Some people were freed by the attackers after showing they could recite verses from the Qur’an, while others were brought out by security forces or managed to escape under their own steam.
One of the rescued hostages, celebrated Guinean singer Sékouba ‘Bambino’ Diabate, said he had overheard two of the assailants speaking in English as they searched the room next to his.
Hiding under bed
“We heard shots coming from the reception area. I didn’t dare go out of my room because it felt like this wasn’t just simple pistols – these were shots from military weapons,” Diabate said.
“The attackers went into the room next to mine. I stayed still, hidden under the bed, not making a noise,” he said. “I heard them say in English ‘Did you load it?’, ‘Let’s go.’”
French newspaper Le Monde quoted him as saying the attackers had spoken with a Nigerian accent.
The raid on the hotel, which lies just west of the city centre near government ministries and diplomatic offices, came a week after Islamic State militants killed 129 people in Paris, raising fears that French nationals were being specifically targeted.
Twelve Air France flight crew were in the building but all were extracted safely, the French national carrier said. A Turkish official said five of seven Turkish Airlines staff had also managed to flee. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua said three of 10 Chinese tourists caught inside had been rescued.
Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita cut short a trip to a regional summit in Chad to return to Bamako, his office said. French President Francois Hollande said France would “use all the means available to us on the ground to free the hostages.”
Sporadic attacks
Northern Mali was occupied by jihadist fighters, some with links to al-Qaeda, for most of 2012. They were driven out by a French-led military operation, but sporadic violence has continued in Mali’s central belt on the southern reaches of the Sahara, and in Bamako.
One security source said as many as 10 gunmen had stormed the building, although the company that runs the hotel, Rezidor Group, said it understood that there were only two attackers.
An Islamic State militant in Syria said the organisation viewed France’s military intervention in Mali as another reason to attack France and French interests.
“This is just the beginning. We also haven’t forgotten what happened in Mali,” said the non-Syrian fighter, who was contacted online by Reuters. “The bitterness from Mali, the arrogance of the French, will not be forgotten at all.”
