BAMAKO, Mali — A masked gunman sprayed bullets in a restaurant popular with foreigners in Mali’s capital early Saturday, killing five people including a French person and a Belgian national, officials and witnesses said.
Al-Mourabitoun, or The Sentinels, a northern Mali jihadist group allied with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the Mauritanian news website Al-Akhbar. It often receives messages from Malian extremists.
Nine people were wounded including two experts at the U.N. mission, said the U.N. stabilization mission in Mali in a statement. The two are Swiss soldiers and were being flown to Senegal for treatment, said the Swiss Defense Ministry.
Mali’s president and prime minister visited the scene and called it “a criminal and terrorist act.” A government statement said an investigation has been opened and pledged to capture the perpetrators.
France and Belgium condemned the attack at La Terrasse, the restaurant and bar in Bamako, and their foreign ministers confirmed the deaths of their nationals. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders called the attack a “cowardly act of terror.”
