Armed attackers laid siege to a hotel in Mali’s capital Bamako on Friday and are rumored to be holding hostages, multiple reports said. According to Agence France-Presse, 170 guests and the entire staff at the Radisson hotel are being threatened by two attackers. The area around the Radisson hotel is being sealed off by security forces as they try to assess the situation, an anonymous official told Reuters. “Very early in the morning there was gunfire,” the security official said. “Apparently it’s an attempt to take hostages.” The perpetrators behind the attacks are supposedly jihadists wielding automatic weapons, a source was cited as telling AFP. The U.S. Embassy in Bamako issued a warning to citizens in the country on Twitter, saying it was “aware of an ongoing active shooter operation” and telling Americans in the country to seek shelter. The African country’s northern region was taken over by Islamic extremists after a military coup in 2012, following which a French-led military campaign the following year scattered them across the country. Since then, Mali has seen periodic attacks such as the one in March this year, where armed assailants shot five people at a popular Bamako restaurant. France currently maintains a force of about 1,000 troops in the country.
