The assault, which ended when Malian and global troops stormed the building, left 19 people dead as well as two attackers, Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has said.
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“We have just decided together with the [Volga-Dnepr] airline’s management how the Cargo 200 [the bodies of the dead] will be met in a week and how we will commemorate these airline employees”, Morozov said in an interview shown on the Rossiya-24 news TV channel on Saturday.
“We are closely following the hostage-taking incident that is taking place at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Bamako / Mali today, 20th November 2015”, the Rezidor Hotel Group said in a statement.
There were 22 military and civilian U.S. Defense Department personnel in Bamako, including five at the Radisson Blu hotel at the time of the attack, according to a defense official.
He’s probably behind the Mali attack, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Friday.
Malian Army Major Modibo Nama Traore told the AP Sunday that security forces are looking for “more than three” people connected to the attacks.
Gunmen went on the rampage from the early morning, shooting in the corridors and taking 170 guests and staff hostage.
Another leader of a rising superpower, Chinese President Xi Jinping, also condemned the “cruel and savage” attack, which killed three Chinese executives of a state-run railway firm.
Monique Kouame Affoue Ekonde, an Ivorian, said she and six other people, including a Turkish woman, were escorted out by security forces as the gunmen rushed “toward the fifth or sixth floor”.
The assault was claimed by al-Qaeda affiliate the al-Mourabitoun group, led by notorious one-eyed Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar. In a final note, Keita said simply: “terrorism will not win”.
It is also unclear whether the three suspects in question were accomplices or directly involved in the attack.
A United Nations official told CNN that the three deceased victims have been identified as two Malian nationals and a French national.
Footage has emerged from inside the hotel in Mali where jihadis launched a deadly attack on Friday.
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A French military operation dispersed Islamist militants in the country’s desert north in 2012 after they had taken control of the region. France now has about 1,000 troops stationed in Mali, a former colony, as part of a counterterrorism effort.
