Special units of the armed forces of Mali, with the support of the French security services began to assault the building and pushed the attacking troops to the upper floors, where an intense battle continued. Initial reports from witnesses and officials suggested there could have been as many as 10 gunmen involved in the attack on the hotel in the former French colony. “Nowhere is excluded”, Keita said.
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The Al-Murabitoun group an Al-Qaeda affiliate led by notorious one-eyed Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar nicknamed the “Uncatchable” or “Mr Marlboro” claimed the attack.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday called for broadest worldwide cooperation to fight terrorism in wake of terror attack in Mali, as HNGN previously reported.
Three different Islamist groups have said they carried out the attack.
The decision to release the photos came a day after the Islamic extremist group that first claimed responsibility for the attack purported to identify the gunmen in an audio recording, according to Al-Akhbar, a Mauritanian news site that often receives messages from Malian extremists.
There were a few suggestions that the attacks proved that Mali’s government was slowing losing control of the country, a claim also rejected by President Keita in his interview said.
“Nowhere in the world is one safe from these barbarians from another era” he said adding that the attackers had “decided to break with humanity”.
Ms Fazekas barricaded herself in her room at the Radisson Blu hotel as gunmen roamed the corridor outside, and even attempted to come after her – by knocking on the door.
“Everything points to two foreigners“, the source said.
The Massina Liberation Front, blamed for previous violence in southern Mali, yesterday became the third group to claim responsibility for the attack.
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Jean-Herve Jezequel, an analyst with the worldwide Crisis Group, said Al-Mourabitoun may be allying with al-Qaida in the face of the losses the extremists have suffered at the hands of French forces that intervened in Mali in 2013 after much of the north fell to radical Islamists. But major global hotel chains and other commercial enterprises that operate potential high-profile “soft targets” are beginning to address heightened security concerns, said Tricia Bacon, an expert on jihadist groups and counterterrorism at American University.
