At least one masked gunman sprayed bullets in a nightclub popular with foreigners in Mali’s capital early yesterday, killing at least five people including a French person and a Belgian national, officials and witnesses said.
France and Belgium condemned the attack at La Terrasse restaurant and bar in Bamako, while their foreign ministers confirmed the deaths of their nationals.
Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders denounced the “cowardly act of terror” and French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius said that “everything must be done to find those responsible for this crime.”
Photo: Reuters
“This attack was led by at least one masked person who opened fire on clients,” the UN stabilization mission in Mali said in a statement.
Two Swiss soldiers serving as UN experts were among nine people wounded in the attack, the Swiss Ministry of Defense said.
Two people who were at the scene are being questioned to determine what happened, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Two gunmen ran out of the nightclub and jumped into a car driven by an accomplice, witness Hamadou Dolo said.
They ran into a police patrol about a block away and fired on the police car, killing its driver, a civilian in the street and a private security guard outside a house, Dolo said.
La Terrasse is in Bamako’s Hippodrome neighborhood — where many expatriates live — and the nightclub is popular on a Friday night for salsa dancing.
French President Francois Hollande’s office said five people had been killed and others injured, and that security had immediately been tightened around French facilities.
A statement from his office said the French embassy has set up a crisis cell to help expatriates in Bamako.
Hollande said that he would meet with Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita to show his support, much as the Malian leader visited Paris to show his support in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January.
French forces led a military operation in early 2013 that largely expelled al-Qaeda-linked extremists from a vast area they had controlled in northeastern Mali.
The military operation in that region continues, and sporadic combat and clashes take place there.
Violence has been rare in Bamako despite the continued upheaval in the north.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS