He did not give the nationalities of the freed hostages or the dead.
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Separately, Mali army spokesman Col. Souleymane Maiga said Tuesday that four soldiers were killed in the attack on the hotel in Sevare, correcting earlier statements that five were killed.
Five soldiers and four gunmen, including one who officials earlier said was strapped with explosives, were also killed.
Ukraine and Russian Federation had previously confirmed that their citizens were among the hostages.
The South African us wiped out was also 38 and “attached to a planes firm exposition offerings towards the UN depending in Mali“, Nelson Kgwete, a spokesperson for your nation’s Department of world Relations and Cooperation, said on Twitter.
Whitehouse said the attack was likely intended “to signal all Malians everywhere that neither their government nor the United Nations can keep them safe”, but noted the rapid response by Mali’s forces.
MINUSMA said it was relieved at the successful conclusion of the anti-terrorist operation, but reiterated its “strong condemnation” of the deadly attack.
“Elements of the Al-Murabitoun group which follows Al Qaeda, following a lengthy period of surveillance and diligence, managed to carry out the operation in the city of Sevare, and specifically on the Byblos Hotel, which was inhabited by Western nationals”, al Jazeera quoted the statement as saying.
A Sevare resident said he heard heavy gunfire and the explosions of rocket-propelled grenades.
Situated only a few kilometres from the regional capital Mopti, Sevare, which has an airbase, is a key staging post on the road to Mali’s desert north which fell to Islamist extremists in 2012.
Malian army sources said the target of Friday’s assault appeared to be a group of Russian pilots working for MINUSMA, which has more than 10,200 military and police on the ground in Mali.
Sources said three South Africans, a Frenchman and a Ukrainian had been registered at the hotel at the time of the attack.
At least 12 people including four foreign UN contractors died in a hostage siege at a hotel in central Mali that ended after government troops stormed the building Saturday.
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Mali, a French colony until 1960, has been in turmoil since a 2012 military coup, after which separatist tribes seized control over vast territories in northern Mali, and later, various Islamist groups started to operate in the country.
