Outside the luxury hotel, the dusty, red-earth streets were coming alive with traffic, the whine of motorbikes mixed with the rumble of minibus taxis amid the bustle of one of Africa's fastest-growing cities.
Five hotel security guards were just finishing the overnight shift and about to make the handoff to their dayside colleagues. Another night, another "Rien a signaler" (French for "Nothing to report"). As one of the guards would later say, "We weren't concentrating."
Two men with Kalashnikov assault rifles and explosives ran toward the guards at 6:50 a.M., surprising them with a burst of automatic fire that felled four of them, one fatally. The only guard to escape unhurt, Cheick Dabo, took cover by diving under a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
It was the beginning of the bloodiest jihadi attack ever in Mali's capital, and the latest high-profile one in Africa, which has been hit by extremist violence in countries like Somalia, Nigeria, Niger, Algeria and Kenya.
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Within the next few hours, the two attackers and 20 victims would be dead. Coming just a week after the Paris massacre, it was a shocking reminder that extremist violence haunts not only the Middle East but also Europe, Africa, Asia, North America and other lands.
The attackers stormed the main entrance with weapons blazing. Just past the glass doors, staff and guests in the marble-floored lobby were overrun. With the attackers firing wildly, the body count mounted quickly.
Tambacouye "Tamba" Diarra, a maître d' in the restaurant, saw a gunman coming toward him and ran. As he fled, he grabbed a guest returning from his morning jog and dragged him to safety outside.
"They are attacking us! They are attacking us!" she wailed, remembered hotel cook Mohammed Coulibaly.
The cook began to shepherd as many people as he could out of the kitchen and down a hallway. As they ran, they could hear gunshots behind them.