At Least 19 Dead After Terrorist Attack on Mali Hotel

Al-Mourabitoun, an al-Qaeda-linked group led by Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, claimed it carried out the attack alongside al-Qaeda’s north African affiliate.

At least 10 gunmen raided the hotel, shooting at guests and staff before taking some 170 people hostage.

Israeli media had reported one dead, but the Malian source was not able to confirm this report.

Meanwhile, security forces in Mali are reportedly searching for three suspects involved in the deadly attack on the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako.

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita cut short a trip to a regional summit in Chad to return to Bamako, his office said. “Nowhere is excluded”, Mr Keita said.

The country was due to begin three days of mourning on Monday.

The attack in Bamako is the latest sign of deepening insecurity in Mali.

Friday’s assault on Bamako came just one week after 130 people were killed during coordinated terror attacks in Paris claimed by the Islamic State (IS).

Putin sent a telegram of condolences to Keita and said “the widest worldwide cooperation” was needed to confront global terrorism, according to a statement by the Kremlin.

“Once again, this barbarity only stiffens our resolve to meet this challenge”.

The extremists were largely ousted by a French-led military operation launched the following year, but large swathes of Mali remain lawless.

Senegal’s President Macky Sall was expected in Bamako later Sunday “to show the sympathy of the Senegal people” towards their west African neighbours, the Mali president’s office said.

It was the secular separatist groups that first wrested northern Mali from the government in 2012, using weapons looted from arsenals in neighboring Libya, but they were soon overtaken by al-Qaida-allied radicals.

One guest said the attackers told him to recite verses from the Quran before he was released.

Agence-France Presse cited two separate police sources, who spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity, as police widened their net for those responsible for the hostage drama.

The militant is also accused of being the ring-leader of an attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013, in which around 40 mostly Western hostages were killed. Mali was once a colony of France and France has helped Mali in previous terrorist attacks.

The dead in Sevare included nine civilians, five of whom worked for the United Nations mission in Mali (MINUSMA), as well as four Malian soldiers and four militants.