Mali hotel attackers named

Malian officials have said they are searching for more than three suspects who may have been involved in the attack, though they gave no other details.

Friday’s attack began at around 7 a.m., when two gunmen armed with assault rifles and explosives attacked just as guards who had worked the night shift were preparing to hand over to a new team. “Mali and our friends who came to visit us did not deserve to be subjected to such odious crimes”, one of them said.

However, in a confusing state of affairs, yet another extremist group has also claimed they were the ones that committed the attack on the hotel.

The al-Akhbar news agency of neighbouring Mauritania said it received an audio message in Arabic from Al Mourabitoun in which the group named two of its men it said staged the attack.

“The attack was targeting the peace agreement”, said Sidi Brahim Ould Sidati, a representative of the Coordination of Azawad Movements, known by its French acronym CMA.

The recording from the group names the attackers as being Abdel Hakim Al-Ansari and Moadh Al-Ansari, but their nationalities were not given.

Six Volga-Dnepr crew members were rescued during the rescue operation by Special Forces and relocated onboard the aircraft within the airport’s protected area.

“We are following several lines, but we won’t be making a statement”, the police source told AFP.

The pictures aired on state television were the first indication that authorities were seeking accomplices to Friday’s attack on the Radisson Blu hotel that killed 20 people.

Jihadist group Al Mourabitoun and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) already had claimed responsibility.

Despite a state of emergency imposed late Friday, residents of Bamako were trying to return to normal life. It was more discreet, though tighter than usual, at public buildings and banks. “People are not being vigilant”.

Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda seized Mali’s desert north in 2012 following a separatist uprising but were scattered by a French military operation the following year.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said Belmokhtar, one of the world’s most wanted men, was “likely” the brains behind the assault.

France has more than 1,000 troops in its former colony, a key battleground of the Barkhane counter-terror mission spanning five countries in Africa’s restive Sahel region.