Latest update : 2015-11-22
Malian security forces were hunting "more than three" suspects on Saturday after a brazen assault on a hotel in the capital that killed at least 19 people, officials said, as the country’s president vowed Mali would not be cowed by terrorism.
“Mali will not shut down because of this attack. Terrorism will not win,” President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said as he visited the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, scene of Friday’s bloody assault by militants.Declaring a 10-day state of emergency and three days of national mourning, Keita said his government had increased security at strategic points around Bamako following the attack, which came a week after Islamist terrorists killed 130 in attacks across the French capital Paris.
"These people have attacked Paris and other places. Nowhere is excluded," Keita said, adding that Mali would still remain open to the world. "Mali is not a closed area and it never will be."
Al-Mourabitoun, a North African jihadi group headed by a former Qaeda fighter
Jihadist groups Al Mourabitoun and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for the attack, which ended when Malian commandos stormed the building and rescued 170 people, many of them foreigners.
Keita said two militants were killed in the commando operation, but security forces said Saturday they were still hunting several more suspects.
"The search has started and I can tell you that we are looking for more than three people at the moment," said Malian army Major Modibo Nama Traore.
Gunmen ‘determined to die’
On Friday morning, heavily armed assailants shouting "God is great!" in Arabic burst into the hotel complex and opened fire on guards before seizing dozens of hostages, sparking a more than seven-hour siege by Malian troops backed by US and French special forces.
Interior Minister Salif Traore, speaking at a press conference Saturday, credited the response of Malian forces for limiting the number of fatalities caused by gunmen who were "determined to die".
"The quick intervention of the Malian forces allowed us to avoid the worst," he said, adding that 17 guests were injured along with three police officers.
As the siege dragged on Friday, hostages trickled out slowly as security forces worked to secure the hotel floor by floor. At least one guest reported the attackers instructed him to recite verses from the Koran as proof of his Muslim faith before he was allowed to leave.
The hotel was being guarded by national police on Saturday, said Sergeant Idrissa Berthe, one of the officers posted at the scene which was still strewn with broken glass from shot out windows. "This morning, investigators have begun to arrive to do their work," he said.
Among the dead were six employees of Russian regional airline Volga-Dnepr, Russia’s foreign ministry said, while six others were rescued.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram of condolences to Keita Saturday and said “the widest international cooperation” was needed to confront global terrorism, according to a statement by the Kremlin.
Chinese President Xi Jinping also condemned the “cruel and savage” attack after it emerged that Chinese executives of a state-run railway firm had died in the assault.
“China will strengthen cooperation with the international community, resolutely crack down on violent terrorist operations that devastate innocent lives and safeguard world peace and security,” the Beijing Foreign Ministry quoted Xi as saying in a statement on its website.
American public health specialist Anita Datar was killed and Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said two Belgians died. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said he was not aware of any French nationals killed.
An Israeli national was also killed, Israeli media said, but there was no confirmation from the foreign ministry.
Setback for France
The attack was another jolting setback for Mali’s former colonial ruler France, which has stationed 3,500 troops in northern Mali to try to restore stability after a rebellion in 2012 by ethnic Tuaregs that was later hijacked by jihadists linked to al Qaeda.
“We (France) have proved to be as blind as the Malian elite. Nothing changes in Mali. The elite continues to act like it always has, as does the international community,” said Laurent Bigot, former undersecretary in charge of West Africa at France’s foreign ministry, alluding to UN peacekeepers.
“People have been ringing the alarm bell for a long time, but it doesn’t do any good,” Bigot, who now works as a consultant, told Reuters.
The attack also refocused attention on a veteran leader of Al Mourabitoun, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, after reports, never confirmed, that he was killed in an air strike in June.
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 violence has continued.
Al Mourabitoun has claimed responsibility for attacks including an assault on a hotel in the town of Sevare, 600 km (375 miles) northeast of Bamako, in August in which 17 people including five UN staff were killed.
Belmokhtar is also blamed for an assault on an Algerian gas field in 2013 and linked with insurgencies across North Africa.
