http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/wo...sson.html?_r=0
DAKAR, Senegal — Heavily armed gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” stormed a Radisson Blu hotel Friday morning in Bamako, the capital of the West African nation of Mali, seizing scores of hostages and leaving bodies strewn across the building.
The gunmen barreled past the hotel’s light security early in the morning, confusing guards with fake diplomatic license plates, and then burst into its glass-door lobby with their guns blazing.
“They started firing everywhere,” said a receptionist at the hotel who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “They were shouting, ‘Allahu akbar.’ They cut someone’s throat, a white man.”
“I hid in my office,” he said. “I saw four of them, armed to the teeth.”
A senior United Nations official said that as many as 27 people had been killed, with bodies found in the basement and on the second floor, according to a preliminary assessment of the devastating attack.
One American was killed, according to a senior American military official...