“I asked everyone to go into the hallway and then suddenly we heard the footsteps of the jihadis behind us and there was total panic and people were running in every direction”, he said. Malian television broadcast chaotic scenes from inside the building as police and other security personnel ushered bewildered guests along corridors to safety.
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Dabo said the attackers fired on the guards, killing one and injuring three.
Although Israel and Mali have no diplomatic relations, Israelis can travel and work there.
A man who worked for a Belgian regional parliament was also among the dead, the assembly said.
Traore credited Malian security forces for their quick response which he said limited the number of fatalities.
Some people were freed by the attackers after showing they could recite verses from the Koran, while others managed to escape or were brought out by security forces.
Guinean singer Sekouba Bambino Diabate, who was among the survivors, told AFP the gunmen spoke English among themselves.
Also reported safe were 12 members of an Air France flight crew and five from Turkish Airlines.
At least 19 people were killed in the more than seven-hour siege, officials said.
The timing of the attack suggested a well-planned operation that analysts said could have been an attempt by al-Qaida and its Al-Mourabitoun allies to assert its relevance amid high-profile assaults by the rival Islamic State group, including the November 13 attacks on Paris that killed 130 people.
Keita, who vowed in a televised address on the day of the siege that “terror will not win”, visited the site Saturday.
Mali has been torn apart by unrest since the north fell under the control of jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaida in 2012. Despite a French-led military intervention in 2013 that drove the extremists from cities and towns, attacks have continued and extended farther south this year, including an assault on a Bamako restaurant popular with foreigners in March. It also was not known if the two dead attackers were included in the United Nations count of the dead.
Malian authorities on Sunday were searching for three suspects in connection with a terrorist attack at a hotel in the capital last week.
Meanwhile, a 10-day state of emergency has been announced in Mali following the attack.
“This is just the beginning”.
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“Why Mali? But over the past decade we have been witnesses of how new and new experiments – each one following another – have been carried out in the region: changes of regimes and changes of power”, Zakharova said. “The bitterness from Mali, the arrogance of the French, will not be forgotten at all”.
