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27 killed in al Qaeda attack on Mali hotel
Security forces in Mali on Friday rescued scores of people, including 20 Indians, who were held hostage by the Islamist militants at the upmarket Radisson Blu Hotel in the capital Bamako.
20 Indians among rescued hostages
Bamako: Security forces in Mali on Friday rescued scores of people, including 20 Indians, who were held hostage by the Islamist militants at the upmarket Radisson Blu Hotel in the capital Bamako.
At least 27 people, including a Belgian diplomat, were killed in the gunfight as militants forced their way into the 190-room hotel early on Friday. Security forces have evacuated everyone from the building.
Two gunmen were killed in the hotel siege. UN peacekeepers saw 12 bodies in the basement of the hotel and another 15 on the second floor, a UN official told Reuters on condition of anonymity adding that UN troops were still helping Malian authorities search the hotel. Geoffrey Dieudonne, an official with the parliament of Belgium’s French-speaking community, had been in Mali along with others for a convention, the parliament said in a statement without elaborating.
Malian special forces stormed the luxury hotel after Islamist gunmen took 170 people, including many foreigners, hostage in the capital of the former French colony which has been battling rebels allied to al Qaeda for several years. A senior security source said gunmen burst into Radisson Blu hotel at 7 am (0700 GMT), firing and shouting “Allahu Akbar”, or “God is great” in Arabic, and began working their way through the building, room by room and floor by floor.
Some of the hostages escaped under their own steam while a few others were freed after showing they could recite verses from the Quran, one security source said. Twelve Air France flight crew were in the hotel, but all were extracted safely, the French national carrier said.
A Turkish official said three of six Turkish Airlines staff who had been in the hotel managed to flee. Among those trapped were several Chinese tourists. Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita cut short a trip to a regional summit in Chad to return to Bamako, his office said. The raid on the hotel, which lies just west of the city centre near government ministries and diplomatic offices, comes a week after Islamic State militants killed 129 people in Paris.
