20 Indians inside Mali hotel are safe, Indian envoy tells TOI

CHENNAI: Twenty Indians who were among several people held hostage at Hotel Radisson Blue in Mali's capital of Bamako by armed men on Friday are safe and the India embassy is in touch with them, a top diplomat told TOI.
Indian diplomat Nikhilesh Mohan Dhirar told TOI over telephone from Bamako on Friday that the embassy was continuously in touch with them and monitoring the situation.
Diplomatic sources said the Indians were employed with a Dubai-based company and were residing at the hotel.
Armed men launched a shooting rampage at the Radisson Blu Hotel on Friday.
Automatic weapons fire could be heard from outside the 190-room hotel, where security forces have set up a security cordon.
A senior security source said 80 hostages had been freed after being made to recite verses from the Quran.
The French newspaper Le Monde quoted the Malian security ministry as saying at least three hostages had been killed.
The raid on the Radisson Blu hotel, which lies just west of the city centre near government ministries and diplomatic offices in the former French colony, comes a week after Islamic State militants killed 129 people in Paris.
The identity of the Bamako gunmen, or the group to which they belong, is not known.
Northern Mali was occupied by Islamist fighters, some with links to al-Qaida, for most of 2012. They were driven out by a French-led military operation, but sporadic violence has continued in Mali's central belt on the southern reaches of the Sahara, and in Bamako.
The security source said as many as 10 gunmen had stormed the building, firing shots and shouting "Allahu Akbar", or "God is great" in Arabic. The hotel's head of security said two private security guards had been injured in the early stages of the attack, which began at 7am (0700 GMT).
A French presidential source said French citizens were in the hotel. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua said several Chinese tourists were among those trapped inside the building. Turkish Airlines also said it had six staff inside.
(With inputs from agencies)