There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but
Mali and neighbouring West African countries have increasingly been the
target of Islamists, some affiliated with al Qaeda.
Malian
police stand guard in an armored vehicle near the site of an attack on a
hotel in Bamako that had been converted into the headquarters of a
European Union military training operation, March 21, 2016.
Authorities in Mali have arrested 21 people in connection with an attack on the headquarters of an EU military training operation there, a senior police official said on Wednesday.
In the foiled gun attack on Bamako's
Nord-Sud Hotel on Monday, one assailant was killed and two others
arrested. There were no reports of casualties at the hotel, where the EU
Training Mission-Mali is based.
The EU mission
is comprised of nearly 600 personnel deployed to train security forces
as part of efforts to stabilise Mali after the defeat of Islamist
militants who had seized the country's desert north in 2012.
There
was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Mali and
neighbouring West African countries have increasingly been the target of
Islamists, some affiliated with al Qaeda.
"Two individuals were arrested, and later we continued and arrested 19 other people," Moussa Ag Infahi, director general of the National Police, told state radio. Police at the scene recovered "a sack of grenades", ammunition, a sub-machine gun and a Kalashnikov assault rifle, he added.
France
led the military intervention that drove the Islamists from their
control of northern Mail in 2013, fearing that the region could be used
as a base for attacks against Europe.
However,
violence is again on the rise. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the
group's North African affiliate, has claimed responsibility for three
attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast that have killed dozens in
the past five months.
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