The incident occurred Friday last week (just a week after the Paris attacks), when at least two gunmen entered the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, opened fire and killed 20 people, including six Russians, three Chinese and an American.
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In the wake of a deadly attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako on Thursday, Mali authorities have apprehended two people that are suspected of having links to the attackers.
Malian troops, backed by French and American special forces, swarmed in to retake the building and free terrified guests and hotel staff during a siege that lasted more than seven hours.
“They were found after a phone at the scene was connected to both suspects”, Army spokesman Modibo Naman Traore said. He declined to bid more details associated to the arrests or the continued investigation, saying exclusively in that officers have been learning supplies recovered from the scene for clues. Security forces in the country are looking into the possibility that the groups might have collaborated on the incident. As per the phone records, it has been found that one of the individuals has been in regular contact with one of the gunmen who initiated the attack since August this year.
The US embassy in Bamako has warned of possible “further terrorist activity” in the city.
The attack has been claimed by the Al-Mourabitoun extremist group, which said it had cooperated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and the Macina Liberation Front, a group active in central Mali that said it had worked with yet another militant group, Ansar Dine.
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Germany, meanwhile is also ready to send up to 650 soldiers to help the United Nations force, which is now a few thousand men short to reaching its full strength of 12,680 men, although it’s not clear how much help the additional troop could actually contribute in expanding the scope of the mission.
