Malian state TV says 80 people who were in the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako when gunmen stormed it this morning have now been freed, ABC News reports.
Some 138 people are still being held hostage at the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital, the hotel has said.
Sky News says that the hostages include 125 guests and 13 staff members.
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
Malian Special Forces Storm Hotel To Free Hostages
Malian special forces have entered the hotel in the capital, Bamako, where gunmen had been holding dozens of people hostage.
The gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu Hotel earlier on November 20, taking 140 guests and 30 employees hostages, the hotel chain said.
The state-run ORTM channel reported that the special forces had released some 80 of them.
Security Minister Salif Traore said 30 others escaped on their own.
China’s media earlier reported that some 10 Chinese citizens were sheltering inside their hotel rooms, while India said 20 of its nationals were among the hostages.
Islamist fighters, some with links to Al-Qaeda, occupied Northern Mali for most of 2012 before they were ousted by an ongoing French-led military operation launched in January 2013.
Islamist groups have since continued to wage attacks in the country.
Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP
Some 20 Indian nationals are among the hostages at the Radisson Blu hotel.
Malian special forces have entered the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital, reports are saying.
At least 80 hostages have now been freed from the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali, according to the country's state broadcaster.
Iyad Ag Ghaly, the leader of the Mali jihadi militant group Ansar Dine, which may be behind the attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali, has recently called for attacks on France.
Ghaly is a Malian Tuareg militant who has been active in the Tuareg rebellions against Mali's government since the 1980s. He has been nicknamed "the strategist."
Ghaly released an audio statement on November 1, in which he threatened France and rejected any peace deal in Mali.
The audio statement was published by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb AQIM), which has close ties to Ansar Dine, according to the Long War Journal.
In the statement, Ghaly said that the French were "oppressing" the people of Mali and said that Ansar Dine was "combating a new horn from the horns of global disbelief" that was a "result of the French Crusader campaign that brought all its knights and horses, and its slaves and its insane ones against the Shariah of Islam in this land."
Ghaly went on to call for jihad against the French people and to call on Muslims in France to also wage jihad against France.
The Ansar Dine leader also praised the January attacks against the Paris-based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Moving quickly back to Paris, AFP reports that the Paris prosecutor's office has officially identified the female body found in the raided apartment in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis as Aitboulahcen.
Aitboulahcen was identified in the media and by police sources as the suicide bomber who blew herself up following an exchange with police at the start of the raid.
The BBC says that the Qatari Al Jazeera TV has identified the militant group attacking the Radisson Blu hotel on Mali as the Ansar al-Din group, an "extremist military group that seeks to implement Islamic Sharia in Mali," according to the channel's correspondent in Mali.
One of those able to get out of the Radisson Blu in Mali was Sekouba Bambino Diabate, a popular Guinean singer. The singer released unharmed, according to Guinean news reports.
"I woke up with the sounds of gunshots and for me, it was just small bandits who came in the hotel to claim something," he told journalists, according to the BBC.
"After 20 or 30 minutes, I realized these are not just petty criminals."