Bamako - Gunmen on Sunday attacked a
luxury resort popular with Western expatriates just outside
Mali's capital, Bamako, killing two people in what the security
minister called a terrorist attack, while 36 guests were
rescued.
Four gunmen arriving on motorbikes and a car stormed Le
Campement Kangaba, near Dougourakoro, to the east of the capital
Bamako, a resort that foreign residents visit for weekend
breaks. Malian security forces backed by French troops deployed
to push them out.
"At first we thought they were armed bandits but we know how
armed bandits operate, they don't hold territory, so now we
think it is a terrorist attack," Mali's Security Minister Salif
Traore told journalists late Sunday outside the entrance to the
resort, part of which was on fire.
Malian security forces, United Nations peacekeeping mission
vehicles and French military armoured vehicles surrounded the
resort, according to a Reuters witness. A helicopter circled
overhead.
In a later news conference, Traore said Malian forces
fatally shot two of the attackers but the other two escaped and
were being pursued. An attacker had been wounded and fled,
leaving a submachine gun and six bottles of explosives behind,
the ministry said earlier.
"We're now in the process of combing the area to verify no
one is hiding anywhere," Traore said.
One of victims killed in the attack was a French-Gabonese
citizen, while the other has not yet been identified, Traore
said. Both were killed by gunfire. Two hotel staff workers and
two guests were also wounded by bullets, he said.
Eight policemen were wounded in the shootout with the
attackers, Traore said.
Security has gradually worsened across Mali since French
forces pushed back Islamist and Tuareg rebel fighters in 2013
from swathes of the north they had occupied the previous year.
Initially concentrated in the desert north, attacks have
increasingly struck the centre and south, around Bamako. Al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and another militant group claimed
responsibility for an attack on a Bamako hotel in 2015 in which
20 people were killed.
Of the 36 people who escaped unharmed, there were 13 French
citizens, 14 Malians, and also Spanish, Dutch, Egyptian and
Kenyan nationals, Traore said.
Daniel Okwogo, a Kenyan guest who witnessed the attack, said
that about 30 minutes after his arrival he heard the gunshots.
"So ... we took a cover, slipped under the bed and then the
security team came and evacuated us," Okwogo said.
Witness Boubacar Sangare was just outside the compound
during the attack. "Westerners were fleeing the encampment while
two plainclothes police exchanged fire with the assailants," he
said.
French troops and a 10 000-strong UN peacekeeping force
have battled to stabilise Mali, a former French colony riven by
ethnic conflict and plagued by dozens of armed groups.
A spokesman for French forces in Mali declined to comment.