Mali – Mali Hotel Hostage Standoff Over, All Hostages Freed, Two Attackers Killed

Mali – A hostage situation at a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, has ended and security forces have killed two Islamist gunmen who stormed the building earlier in the day, security sources said on Friday.

Police were moving in and out of the hotel, escorting civilians, some of them wounded, a witness said. Interior Security Minister Colonel Salif Traore, speaking on state-run television, said 76 people had been freed by security forces.

All hostages at the Malian siege where at least three people died are now safe and out of the Radisson Blu in Bamako where they had been held, ministerial adviser Amadou Sangho told French television station BFMTV.

“These people have been taken under the wing of the civil authorities,” he said.

Earlier Malian commandos stormed the luxury hotel after Islamist 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.

He added the operation was undertaken “uniquely” by Malian forces.

The Pentagon said that 22 Defense Department military and civilian employees were accounted for after the attack on a luxury hotel in Bamako, Mali.

There were no injuries reported among those personnel, it said.

At least 27 people were reported dead on Friday after Malian commandos stormed a luxury hotel in the capital Bamako with at least 170 people inside, many of them foreigners, that had been seized by Islamist gunmen.

The former French colony has been battling Islamist rebels for several years, and the jihadist group Al Mourabitoun, allied to al Qaeda and based in the deserts of northern Mali, claimed responsibility for the attack in a tweet.

By late afternoon, ministerial adviser Amadou Sangho told the French television station BFMTV that no more hostages were being held.

But a U.N. official said U.N. peacekeepers on the scene had seen 27 bodies in a preliminary count, and that a search of hotel was continuing. It was not clear whether any of the gunmen, who were said to have dug in on the seventh floor of the hotel as special forces advanced on them, were still active.

State television showed footage of troops in camouflage fatigues wielding AK47s in the lobby of the Radisson Blu, one of Bamako’s smartest hotels and beloved of foreigners. In the background, a body lay under a brown blanket at the bottom of a flight of stairs.

The peacekeepers saw 12 dead bodies in the basement of the hotel and another 15 on the second floor, the U.N. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. He added that the U.N. troops were still helping Malian authorities search the hotel.

A man working for a Belgian regional parliament was among the dead, the assembly said.

Minister of Internal Security Colonel Salif Traoré said the gunmen had burst through a security barrier at 7 a.m. (0200 ET), spraying the area with gunfire and shouting “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is great” in Arabic.