Mali Attacks: Dangote Debunks Being Among Hostages At Radisson Blu Hotel, Mali

Shooters assaulted a five-star lodging in Mali’s capital Bamako on Friday and are holding 170 prisoners, witnesses said. Assailants yelling “Allahu Akbar” opened fire outside the Radisson Blu Hotel in the centre of the capital before raging it. Automatic weapon shoot could be heard from outside the 190-room lodging where security forces set up a security cordon. Addressing qatari media,  Al Jazeera by telephone from Bamako, entrepreneur Garba Konate said a gathering of assailants appeared three hours earlier.

The lodging’s owner said it “knows about the hostage-taking that is ongoing at the property today… According to our data two persons have locked 140 visitors and 30 employees,” the organization said in an announcement.

The shooting takes after a 24-hour attack and hostage-taking circumstance at another lodging in August in the centre Malian town of Sevare.

Four soldiers, five UN specialists, and four attackers were executed in that assault.

Armed group have continued to wage assaults in Mali in spite of a June peace arrangement between previous Tuareg rebels in the north of the nation and opponent rival government armed groups.

Northern Mali fell in March-April 2012 to al-Qaeda-linked groups since quite a while ago amassed in the zone before being uprooted by a France-led military operation dispatched in January 2013.

Notwithstanding the peace bargain, huge swathes of Mali remain outside the control of government and foreign forces.