THE hostage situation in Mali is reportedly over with 18 bodies removed from the Radisson Blu
Hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako.
AFP reports that bodies are now being recovered from the hotel, however, among these 18 may be the bodies of three attackers who were killed by special forces during the assault.
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.
Jihadists are firing in the corridor,” the security source said.
Islamic extremists previously took control of northern Mali in 2012 that prompted a France-led military intervention.
In March, masked gunmen shot up a Bamako restaurant popular with foreigners, killing five people.
Then in September, a 24-hour siege at another Mali hotel ended with the deaths of five UN workers.
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