A UN source, who asked not to be named, said that the attackers remained in the hotel and that gunfire continued to be heard three hours after the initial assault. Kgwete declined to disclose the id of the lifeless South African.
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There were exchanges of fire throughout Friday and the army brought the siege to an end early on Saturday, with one source saying foreign special forces were also involved.
The army besieged the hotel after the attack in a bid to neutralize the gunmen and release the hostages.
“(The siege) seems to be over and it has ended well”, said a Malian defense ministry spokesman, Colonel Diaran Koné.
The Department of worldwide Relations and Co-operation said a 38-year-old man from Pretoria was killed in the siege while two other South Africans were safe.
The attackers may be followers of Amadou Koufa, a leader who has been linked to attacks on Mali’s army including a January attack that killed 10 soldiers in Nampala, said Col. Souleymane Maiga, chief spokesman for the military.
The attackers raided the Hotel Byblos, poplar among foreign visitors and troops, on Friday morning, authorities said, adding that military efforts against the gunmen were made “sensitive” by the presence of hostages.
The government said Friday that forces detained seven suspected militants.
When that attack was successfully warded off by government troops, the militants stormed the Byblos Hotel near the town’s airport, where they took several hostages.
A Ukrainian hostage managed to escape from the “four or five terrorists” who were still barricaded inside the hotel in Sevare, telling soldiers that he had been with three South Africans and a Russian when the shooting began.
Meanwhile, press attache of the Russian embassy to Mali Viktor Gorelov said that a Russian national was also freed from the hotel in Sevare. “According to our information, they tried to kidnap Westerners but they didn’t succeed”, said another local resident contacted by phone by AFP.
The group had claimed responsibility for two previous attacks in northwestern and southern Mali on June 27 and 28 respectively, in which a total of six people were killed.
The situation in Mali has been fraught with insecurity since islamists, some with links to Al Qaeda, seized control of cities and towns in the North of the country.
2015: Sporadic attacks continue in desert area of northern Mali, blamed on Tuareg and Islamist groups.
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But the attacks have spread since the beginning of the year to the centre of the country and to the south near the borders with Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.
