At least three suspects are being hunted over the attack in which two militants were killed.
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The hotel attack was claimed by the Al-Mourabitoun (The Sentinels) radical group, which has links to al-Qaida.
The attack began at around 7 a.M. Friday morning, when two gunmen armed with assault rifles and explosives attacked just as guards who had worked the night shift were preparing to hand over to a new team.
The Radisson Blu Hotel Bamako, Mali, was the scene of a terrorist attack on Friday, November 20, where 170 people were held hostage.
In this TV image taken from Mali TV ORTM, security forces help hostages to safety, inside the Radisson Blu Hotel.
Mali’s interior minister says that of the 19 people killed in Friday’s attack on a luxury hotel in the capital, 18 were guests, while the other was a member of the military police guarding the hotel.
Ahead of the three days of national mourning, the chairman of the West African regional bloc Ecowas, Senegal’s President Macky Sall, visited Bamako to show support.
Three Chinese, Zhou Tianxiang and Wang Xuanshang and Chang Xuehui were executives from the state-owned China Railway Construction Corp, the company said in a statement on its website. French President Francois Hollande said France would “use all the means available to us on the ground to free the hostages”. In a final note, Keita said simply: “terrorism will not win”.
Pope Francis yesterday offered his condolences to the Malian people, in the form of a telegram from the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, to the Archbishop of Bamako, Jean Zerbo.
Security has remained high at the major hotels in the Malian capital, with several hotels reporting numerous cancellations following the attack.
On Saturday a security source told AFP that the authorities were “actively pursuing” at least three people over the attack in the former French colony. “Paris isn’t, Geneva isn’t, NY isn’t, Moscow isn’t”, he said. We have offices from the field engineers regiment and from the Airforce as part of the municipal operation in Mali but they were nowhere near the hotel so far as we know, the information we have to date, we do not have Ghanaian victims.
Malian troops backed by French and American forces then assaulted the hotel in a siege lasting more than seven hours that involved clearing the building floor by floor.
Al-Aaida and another Islamist group claimed responsibility for the attack.
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A witness outside the hotel said gunfire could be heard from time to time.
