THE hostage situation in Mali is reportedly over with 18 bodies removed from the Radisson Blu
Hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako.Mali’s security minister has told AFP that the siege is over and that bodies are now being recovered from the hotel.
A Belgian government official was among those killed in the attack, according to the parliament’s official Twitter feed. Geoffrey Dieudonne was in Mali to give a training seminar for civil servants, according to an official parliament statement, reports the BBC.
The bodies of three attackers who were killed by special forces during the assault may also be included in the death toll.
African jihadist group Al-Mourabitoun, affiliated with al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack on the luxury hotel packed with foreigners
Earlier Malian special forces entered the hotel to end a siege by gunmen.
The suspected terrorists stormed the US-owned hotel shouting “God is great!” in Arabic.
The gunmen took 170 people hostage.
The alarm was raised when the US embassy posted to Twitter warning locals of an “ongoing active shooter operation” at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, a hotel reportedly popular with French expats.
French officials said 50 elite police troops had been sent from Paris to Bamako.
Monique Kouame Affoue Ekonde, from Ivory Coast, said she and six other people, including a Turkish woman, were escorted out by security forces as the gunmen rushed “toward the fifth or sixth floor.”
“I think they are still there. I’ve left the hotel and I don’t know where to go. I’m tired and in a state of shock,” she said.
The White House said US President Barack Obama was briefed about the attack by his national security adviser, Susan Rice.
The US embassy has warned all staff and US citizens to find shelter, and to contact their families.
A security source told Associated Press that everything had happened on the seventh floor of the building.
Islamic extremists previously took control of northern Mali in 2012 that prompted a France-led military intervention
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