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.
Advertisement
“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”.
Sevare, a garrison town about 375 miles northeast of the capital, Bamako, is at the heart of Mali’s tourism industry and up until now had not been targeted in the attacks more common in the northern towns of Gao and Timbuktu.
Radhia Achour, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSMA, confirmed that the released hostages were UN contractors – two South Africans, one Russian and one Ukrainian.
Hotel Debo sits next to the Byblos hotel and earlier reports from officials and residents indicated the fighting may have begun at the Debo.
It was not clear how many people were being held in the hotel by the attackers.
Military spokesman Colonel Souleymane Maiga said the early suspicion was that the Massina Liberation Front, whose members are mainly drawn from central Mali’s ethnic Peul community, had carried out the attack.
The main Tuareg-led rebel alliance known as Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), which was the last group to sign the peace accord, on Sunday issued a statement condemning the “terrorist attack” in Sevare.
Malian forces cordoned off the area but their efforts against the gunmen were made “sensitive” by the presence of hostages, explained a military source.
A 38-year-old South African who died in the attack worked for an aviation company that was assisting the United Nations contingent in Mali, Nelson Kgwete, spokesman for South Africa’s foreign ministry, said on Twitter.
Sources said three South Africans, a Frenchman and a Ukrainian had been registered at the hotel at the time of the attack.
There were exchanges of fire throughout Friday and the army brought the siege to an end early on Saturday, with one source saying foreign special forces were also involved. The investigation is underway and the circumstances of their deaths are being established.
A Sevare resident told AFP by telephone in Bamako that “people are starting to go about their business”. The body of an unidentified man was seen lying outside the building near a burnt-out van, pictures from the scene showed Saturday.
Advertisement
The attack, far to the south of the Islamist militants’ traditional desert strongholds, was the latest in what appears to be a growing campaign against Malian troops and UN personnel by remnants of an al Qaeda-linked insurgency.
