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.
RELATED: 5 Killed, 170 Held Hostage In Malian Hotel [TWEETS]
At least 10 bodies have been found in a hall of the hotel, Coulibaly said. At least six people injured in the attack have been hospitalized, Mali Health Minister Marie Madeleine Togo told state broadcaster ORTM.
Video aired by ORTM showed security personnel leading people out of the building.
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.
The attack, Saldago said, came as the hotel hosted diplomatic delegations working on a peace process in the landlocked country, a former French colony that has been battling Islamist extremists with the help of U.N. and French forces.
The Radisson chain said that as many as 170 people — 140 guests and 30 employees — had been there as the attack began.
Malian soldiers and U.N. troops had the hotel surrounded, a journalist for ORTM told CNN from the scene. Two security personnel were injured, Malian Security Minister Salif Traore said on ORTM.
“We’re still hearing erratic gunfire,” journalist Katarina Hoije told CNN from near the scene Friday afternoon.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Counterassault underway, French President says
The Radisson Blu Hotel is in an upscale neighborhood outside the center of Bamako, rising high above the dusty streets and surrounding houses. With 190 rooms and suites, it is known as a hub for international guests such as diplomats and businesspeople, and it is a 15-minute drive from Bamako-Senou International Airport.
Security forces have begun a counterassault on the hotel, said French President Francois Hollande, who said he’d been in touch with Malian authorities dealing with the hostage situation.
Hollande, speaking to reporters in Paris, pledged to provide “necessary support” to help Mali resolve the situation.
France on Friday afternoon said it dispatched to Mali an elite paramilitary group trained in hostage rescue and counterterrorism operations.
U.S. special operations forces also are helping “move civilians to secured locations as Malian forces clear the hotel of hostile gunmen,” said Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Falvo, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command.
The attack comes just a day after Hollande praised his troops for successfully fighting Islamists in the former French colony. It also comes a week after France suffered its own high-profile terror attack: Shootings and suicide bombings, claimed by the terror group ISIS, that killed 130 people in and near Paris.
French military involvement in Mali picked up in 2013, when France, at Mali’s request, launched an offensive after radical Islamists seized the strategic town of Konna. The ground and air campaign sent Islamist fighters who had seized the northern region fleeing into the vast desert.
Though military pressure largely drove Islamist militants from cities, the militants have have regrouped in the desert areas, said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.
“Unfortunately, this (hotel) is a likely target” because it is popular with international guests such as U.N. workers, Pham said.
Diplomats, airline employees were at hotel
The hotel, one of the capital’s most modern, is known as a hub for international guests such as diplomats and businesspeople.
As news of the attack spread, media outlets and officials from a number of nations reported that some of their citizens were in the hotel or had been freed. A summary:
• Seven Algerians, including six members of an Algerian diplomatic delegation, are safe after being trapped in the hotel, the state-run Algerie Presse Service reported Friday afternoon. The Algerians were freed during a counterassault by U.N. and Malian forces, the outlet reported.
• Twenty Indian nationals, working for a Dubai-based company and staying at the hotel on a long-term basis, were safely evacuated, Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said on Twitter.
• Twelve Air France crew members who were staying at the hotel were safely extracted, the airline tweeted Friday. Air France has canceled all its flights Friday to and from Bamako as a precaution, the airline said.
• Turkish Airlines said at least seven of its employees were staying at the hotel Friday. Six are free, and one still was in the hotel as of early Friday afternoon, the airline said.
• Six U.S. citizens have been “rescued so far,” U.S. Africa Command tweeted Friday. The command added that two U.S. military personnel are “assisting outside (the) hotel.”
• At least seven Chinese guests are among those held hostage, Chinese media reported. At least four of them had been rescued by Friday afternoon, state-run CCTV reported, citing a source at the Chinese Embassy in Mali. One of the trapped Chinese guests exchanged instant messages with a reporter from the Xinhua news agency and said he heard multiple gunshots outside his room and then smelled smoke.
• Two German nationals were able to leave the hotel, Germany’s Foreign Office said.
