Malian troops take position outside the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako on November 20, 2015. (AFP)
Malian security services have evacuated around a dozen hostages from the luxury Radisson Blu hotel in the capital Bamako where gunmen took 170 people hostage today, a security ministry spokesman told AFP.
"Special forces were able to free around a dozen people," the spokesman told AFP.
An AFP journalist saw three freed hostages, including two women, who told him they had seen the body of a fair-skinned man lying on the floor of the hotel.