Mali tightens security after hotel attack

Gunmen went on a rampage in the hotel from the early morning on Friday, shooting in the corridors and taking 170 guests and staff hostage.

Malian special forces, aided by American and French special forces stationed in the region, took back control of property by Friday evening.

“I realized that if I didn’t leave the kitchen, the smoke would kill me so I waited until it was quiet and I jumped through the hotel window”, he said.

The assault on a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital that killed 19 people was a clear attempt to derail a fragile peace process, a representative of northern separatist groups said Sunday.

He was in Mali as a consultant to the government on education, Israeli officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his cabinet at an extraordinary meeting late Friday vowed to reinforce security, state television reported, without providing more details.

Mali’s government declared a 10-day nationwide state of emergency after a jihadist attack on a hotel in the capital Bamako that left least 27 people dead.

Russia’s foreign ministry said Russian people are also among the dead, but was waiting on “reliable information” before confirming the number of its citizens killed.

The attack was organized jointly by the two factions – “Al-Murabitun” and ‘Al-Qaeda in the countries of Arab Maghreb, ‘ which operate in several countries of North Africa.

The Foreign Ministry has confirmed that no Ghanaian was involved in the recent terrorist attack in a hotel in Mali. He said a three-day period of national mourning was due to begin Monday, with flags flying at half-mast. French President Francois Hollande said France would “use all the means available to us on the ground to free the hostages”.

Friday’s assault came a week after militants killed 130 people in gun and bomb attacks in Paris claimed by Islamic State. “As a result, we want to know who hosted them”. The Islamists were largely ousted by a French-led military operation launched the following year, but large swathes of Mali remain lawless. Since then, Mali has seen periodic attacks such as the one in March this year, where armed assailants shot five people at a popular Bamako restaurant.