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 "They've penetrated inside the hotel. The operations are under
way," a police source told Reuters.
State television said 80 hostages had been freed but the French
newspaper Le Monde quoted the Malian security ministry as saying at
least three people had been killed in the initial attack. A witness
outside the hotel said gunfire could be heard from time to time.
A senior security source said the gunmen had burst into Radisson Blu
hotel at 7 a.m. (0200 ET), firing and shouting "Allahu Akbar", or
"God is great" in Arabic, and begun working their way through the
building, room by room and floor by floor.
Some hostages escaped under their own steam while others were freed
after showing they could recite verses from the Koran, one security
source said.
Twelve Air France <AIRF.PA> 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 had managed to flee.
The Chinese state news agency Xinhua said several Chinese tourists
were among those trapped inside the building.
Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita cut short a trip to a
regional summit in Chad to return to Bamako, his office said. French
President Francois Hollande said France would "use all the means
available to us on the ground to free the hostages".
The raid on the hotel, which lies just west of the city center near
government ministries and diplomatic offices, comes a week after
Islamic State militants killed 129 people in Paris.
The identity of the Bamako gunmen, or the group to which they
belong, is not known.
ISLAMISTS ACTIVE IN MALI
Northern Mali was occupied by Islamist fighters, some with links to
al Qaeda, for most of 2012. They were driven out by a French-led
military operation, but sporadic violence has continued in Mali's
central belt on the southern reaches of the Sahara, and in Bamako.
One security source said as many as 10 gunmen had stormed the
building, although the company that runs the hotel, Rezidor Group,
said it understood that there were only two attackers.
The hotel's head of security, Seydou Dembele, said two private
security guards had been shot in the legs in the early stages of the
assault.
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"We saw two of the attackers. One was wearing a balaclava. The other
was black-skinned. They forced the first barrier," Dembele told
Reuters.
Within minutes of the assault, police and then soldiers had
surrounded the hotel and were blocking roads leading into the
neighborhood.
It is not the first time Bamako has come under attack.
An Islamist group claimed responsibility for the death of five
people last March in an attack on a restaurant in Bamako that is
popular with foreigners.
And in August, 17 people were killed during an attack on a hotel in
Sevare in central Mali, some 600 km (375 miles) northeast of Bamako,
that was claimed by the Sahara-based Islamist militant group
al-Mourabitoun.
The dead in Sevare included nine civilians, five of whom worked for
the U.N. mission in Mali (MINUSMA), as well as four Malian soldiers
and four militants.
In the wake of last week's Paris attacks, an Islamic State militant
in Syria told Reuters the organization viewed France's military
intervention in Mali as another reason to attack France and French
interests.
"This is just the beginning. We also haven't forgotten what happened
in Mali," said the non-Syrian fighter, who was contacted online by
Reuters.
"The bitterness from Mali, the arrogance of the French, will not be
forgotten at all."
France said it was dispatching 50 elite counter-terrorism officers
to Bamako imminently.
(Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Joe Bavier and Ed Cropley;
Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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