this is a hotel which stands near government ministries, near diplomatic offices in bamiko. apparently very little security there to begin with, the gunman stormed the building and were firing shots and shouting god is great in arabic and saying several chinese tourist are among those trapped inside and also aware there are french nationals also trapped inside, 170 hostages, that is 140 customers presumably tourists, visitors, officials and 30 employees. we are also hearing word that two hostages, two female hostages were allowed out of the building by the hostage takers apparently after reciting verse from the koran and also hearing that at least two people are dead, all of this has to be verified as you can imagine, a lot of information coming out to us from the scene. yvonne has been monitoring the story from us from the nigeria capitol abuja and quite a chaotic picture but that hostage situation is still on going. >> that is right and just to reiterate what we are getting from people on the ground that the hotel is still arounded by the security services, special forces

hour with our continuing extensive coverage of the hostage situation taking place in mali's capitol bamiko and bring you up to date with what we know so far and happening at the luxury radisson blue hotel, very popular with tourists and officials. three people have been killed and security forces have managed to rescue around a dozen hostages and now initially there were around 140 guests and 30 staff members being held and total of 170 and know there are at least ten gunmen involved in the ongoing situation and amongst the hostages are chinese, french, turks and nigerian nationals being held inside that building. most of the gunfire taking place on the seventh floor of the radisson blue. this is located just west of bamiko's capitol, it's an area very close to ministries and diplomatic offices. it takes up a whole block and is in the western district of the capitol. we have a local business owner here and has been giving us more details. >> about ten gunmen early in the morning at the radisson blue and started shooting at the guards that were guarding the radisson blue and the news we get