(REUTERS)
All remaining hostages at the Malian siege where at least three people died are now safe and out of the Radisson Blu in Bamako where they had been held, ministerial adviser Amadou Sangho told French television station BFMTV.
“These people have been taken under the wing of the civil authorities,” he said.
Earlier Malian commandos stormed the luxury hotel after Islamist gunmen took 170 people including many foreigners hostage in the capital of the former French colony, which has been battling rebels allied to al Qaeda for several years.
He added the operation was undertaken “uniquely” by Malian forces.
Hostage freed from Mali hotel says attackers spoke English
A famous Guinean singer who was among 170 people taken hostage on Friday by Islamist gunmen in the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, said he heard attackers in the next room speaking English.
“I heard them say in English ‘Did you load it?’, ‘Let’s go’,” singer Sékouba ‘Bambino’ Diabate, who was freed by Malian security forces, told Reuters in Conakry. “I wasn’t able to see them because in these kinds of situations it’s hard.”
Too soon to say whether Mali situation related to Paris attacks -US envoy
A U.S. presidential envoy to the coalition battling Islamic State said on Friday that it was too soon to speculate whether the hostage situation in Mali was related in some way to the attacks in Paris last week.
“It is too really to soon to speculate” on whether the attacks may be related, Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk told MSNBC. “The groups in Mali aren’t particularly connected to the ISIS groups,” he added, using an acronym for Islamic State.