talking of my own experience, i've stayed in raddison blu hotels in west africa, particularly in dakar, you drive up to the gates, there are various security agents who check the vehicle, looking for bombs, weapons, looking for any kind of device, so a sense of heightened security there. i imagine that would have happened in this situation at the hotel when these attackers arrived. now, there is this report that surfaced, again, not clear how accurate this is, that apparently these people showed up in vehicles which had diplomatic license plates. quite possible for them to get past security and into the building. you know, a good security presence is what i think would have been there. the question is how were they able to penetrate the building and carry out the on going siege with all the security in the area. was the guard of the security down? were people not on alert? were people relaxed? there were two attacks earlier this year. my final point, there were two attacks earlier this year, which i did mention earlier, one was in march, a restaurant was attacked, several people were k

hotel in mali, west africa, including one american. this morning the group of armed men stormed the raddison blu in the capital of bomako. they took scores hostage and were were freed over the course of several areas. a group linked to al qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack in the former french call knee. it took place at the bamako at the radissdison blu. >> reporter: soldiers help them after a hostage situation that lasted many hours. gunmen got inside shouting god is great in arabic before taking 170 people hostage. the full extent of the attack became clear, many here were in shock. as the malian president cut short a trip to chad and flew home, the government tried to reassure people. >> translator: this morning at 7:00 a.m. the radisson hotel was attacked. according to the information we have, there are two or three armed men with military armament that walked into the hotel. we activated the crisis cell and it has military and officials from foreign affairs and the security ministry. we deployed on-site to cordon the hotel. >> reporter: following an assault with united nations troops as well as maillyi