27 dead in Mali hotel attack
- All hostages evacuated from the 190 room hotel
- 20 Indians among the hostages rescued
United Nations peacekeepers saw some 27 bodies on two separate floors of a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital Bamako that was attacked on Friday, a UN official told Reuters, citing preliminary information.
The peacekeepers saw 12 corpses in the basement of the hotel and another 15 on the second floor, the official said on condition of anonymity. He added that the UN troops were still helping Malian authorities search the hotel. “They currently have no more hostages in their hands and forces are in the process of tracking them down,” security minister Salif Traore told a news conference following a stand-off of several hours at Bamako’s Radisson Blu.
Assailants with guns blazing attacked a hotel hosting diplomats and others in Mali’s capital on Friday morning, leaving at least 10 people dead and trapping dozens in the building for hours, officials in the West African nation said.
Security forces launched a counterattack at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako and escorted guests out. By late Friday afternoon, no hostages were believed to remain in the building, though attackers still were inside, Malian army Col. Mamadou Coulibaly told reporters.
The assault began around 7 a.m., when two or three attackers with AK-47 rifles exited at least one vehicle with diplomatic plates and entered the hotel with guns firing, said Olivier Saldago, a spokesman for the United Nations mission in Mali.
UN Sec Gen express concerns over attacks
The United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki-Moon condemns the horrific terrorist attack at the Radisson hotel in Bamako which killed an unknown number of civilians and injured many more. He expressed his sincere condolences to the Government of Mali and the bereaved families and wishes a speedy recovery to the wounded victims of this attack. The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has been assisting the Malian authorities in the handling of this crisis.
