“There are 12 dead in all”, an army officer told AFP after the operation at the Hotel Byblos in Sevare, listing the fatalities as five “terrorists”, five soldiers and two “white people“, whose identity was being checked.
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Malian officials say the Russian man had hidden inside the hotel from the militants during the entire siege and provided useful information to security forces.
Twelve people – including five Malian soldiers – died as a result of a hostage situation and ensuing battle between the attackers and soldiers at a Mali hotel, Malian state-run broadcaster ORTM reported Saturday.
Government officials said at least two militants were also killed in the fighting.
The town of Sevare, lying more than 640 kilometers northeast from the country’s capital of Bamako, is situated near the main regional town of Mopti which itself if a key point of access to the northern Mali territories.
Three attackers were also killed, he said. “The Russian is now in the same city [Sevare], at a UN camp”, Gorelov said in a telephone interview with Interfax. Russian news agencies, citing a press attache at Moscow’s embassy in Mali, said a Russian hostage employed by the airline UTair was among those freed on Saturday.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman on Saturday condemned the attack on a Mali hotel by militants, and confirmed the death of at least one UN contractor.
Unidentified gunmen swept through Sevare on Friday morning on motorbikes, attacking an air force base before taking over the hotel. “The operation was led by Mali’s gendarmerie with our companions”.
The South African national killed was 38 and “attached to an aviation company rendering services to the UN contingent in Mali”, Nelson Kgwete, a spokesman for the nation’s Department of global Relations and Cooperation, said on Twitter.
A French-led offensive ousted the jihadis from power in the north in early 2013.
Remnants of the group have staged a number of attacks on United Nations peacekeepers and Malian forces though today’s assault on a hotel known to be popular with UN pilots marks a serious escalation.
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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.
