Mali TV airs images of man, woman suspected in hotel attack

Authorities in Mali yesterday published photographs of a man and a woman they said helped plan last week’s militant assault on a luxury hotel in the capital Bamako. The pictures aired on state television were the first indication that authorities were seeking accomplices to Friday’s attack on the Radisson Blu hotel that killed 20 people. […]

Authorities in Mali yesterday published photographs of a man and a woman they said helped plan last week’s militant assault on a luxury hotel in the capital Bamako.
The pictures aired on state television were the first indication that authorities were seeking accomplices to Friday’s attack on the Radisson Blu hotel that killed 20 people. The two gunmen were killed.
“They are suspects – people suspected of having links with the two terrorists,” a source close to the state’s security ministry told Reuters.
The bloodshed in Bamako, a week after Islamic State attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, underlined deepening insecurity in Mali and the difficulties French and U.N. peacekeeping forces are having in stabilizing the former French colony.
The 10,000-member U.N. force, MINUSMA, said on Monday that 20 civilians and two militants died in the attack, raising the toll from 19 civilians reported earlier by the government. Chief prosecutor Boubacar Sidiki Samake, said authorities had recovered mobile phones and machine pistols from the bodies of the two militants that will help them understand how the attack was conceived.
The Massina Liberation Front, blamed for previous violence in southern Mali, on Sunday became the third group to claim responsibility for the hotel attack.