A deadly hostage drama at a Mali hotel in which 13 people died -- including five UN workers -- was claimed today by fighters linked to the notorious one-eyed Algerian jihadi leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
A radical associated with militant Malian Islamic leader Amadou Koufa said he gave his "blessing" for the attack on the Byblos Hotel in the central town of Sevare.
Koufa has ties to Belmokhtar -- known as "The Uncatchable" -- the former head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) who now leads his own extremist Al-Murabitoun group.
"The hand of Allah has guided the mujahedeen of Sevare against the enemies of Islam," Souleyman Mohamed Kennen told an AFP reporter in Bamako during a brief telephone interview.
The stand-off with the hostage-takers, which began early Friday, ended nearly 24 hours later when Malian troops stormed the hotel.
Souleyman claimed the group was also behind the killing of three Malian soldiers yesterday when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device close to Diabozo, near Sevare.
Four other troops were wounded, the government said.
Jihadist attacks long concentrated in the north of Mali -- where extremists linked to AQIM still exercise much control -- began spreading to the centre of the country earlier this year, even as far south as the borders with Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso in June.
The US said it targeted Belmokhtar in an air strike in the Libyan desert the same month, but AQIM denied reports its former leader had been killed.
Investigators said yesterday they found phone numbers and addresses on the bodies of the "terrorists" killed in the Sevare hotel which suggested they were affiliated with the Macina Liberation Front (FLM), a new Islamic extremist group drawn from the Fulani people of central Mali.
"At this stage there is no formal proof that it was the Macina Liberation Front, but strong suspicions point to this group that has been seeking notoriety at all costs," she said.
But a regional security source told AFP there is "much coming and going between all these groups. In claiming responsibility for the Sevare attack, Souleyman is also speaking for the other jihadi groups," he said.
