Three Chinese Citizens Killed in Mali Hotel Siege

At least 27 people were killed as Malian Special Forces ended the hostage situation in the luxury hotel.

Two groups-Al-Mourabitoun, which has ties to al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb-have taken responsibility for the attack, but their claims have not been verified.

At least 10 people have been confirmed dead in Friday’s attack on a five-star hotel in Bamako, Mali, Malian army Col. Mamadou Coulibaly told reporters, per CNN.

“Mali will never be alone”, Mr Sall said.

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).

Gunmen went on the rampage through the hotel from the early morning, shooting in the corridors and taking 170 guests and staff hostage, many of them foreigners.

The bloodshed at the Radisson Blu resort in Mali, a previous French colony, evoked the problems French troops as well as United Nations peacekeepers encounter in recovering protection and order in a West African state that has fought rebels and also militants in its weakly-governed desert north for many years.

Witnesses talked of around a dozen armed assailants, but a Malian source reported three “terrorists who were shot or blew themselves up”, adding that the total number of gunmen was not more than four.

The attack may have been motivated by a desire to disrupt a fragile local peace process that has made progress in recent months, Jean-Herve Jezequel, an analyst for the global Crisis Group, said in an interview posted to the group’s website Friday night.

A senior security source said the gunmen had burst into Radisson Blu hotel at 7 a.m. (0700 GMT), firing and shouting “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is great” in Arabic, and begun working their way through the building, room by room and floor by floor.

The attack appears to have had an immediate effect on the country’s tourism industry with one major hotel saying it had received numerous cancellations, and that restaurant and business centre reservations were down.

Russian citizens were among those killed in an attack on a top hotel in the capital of Mali on Friday, the RIA news agency reported on Saturday, citing Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

Among the victims were six Russians, three Chinese, two Belgians, an American, an Israeli, a Senegalese and a member of the Malian special forces. French and USA security forces aided the operation.

Dabo said the attackers fired on the guards, killing one and injuring three.