Five people have been killed in a machine-gun and grenade attack
on a nightclub in Mali's capital, Bamako.A BBC correspondent at the scene says a French national was shot dead at La Terrasse bar. Two Malian men were killed as the gunmen fled the scene.
A Belgian man died when a grenade was thrown at his car in a nearby street. A third European died in hospital.
Witnesses say the attackers shouted "God is Great" in Arabic ("Allahu Akbar").
The BBC's Alex Duval Smith in Bamako says this is the first time there has been such an attack in the capital.
It is not clear who carried it out, but al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants have been fighting the Malian army in the north of the country for a number of years - and France and African troops intervened two years ago to stop their advance south on Bamako.
French President Francois Hollande strongly condemned the attack as "cowardly" and his foreign minister Laurent Fabius said it would strengthen the former colonial power's resolve to "fight terrorism in all its forms".
Police sources said that two people connected to the incident had been arrested.
Quick escape Our reporter says French soldiers arrived quickly after the attack on the first-floor nightclub on Saturday.
They confirmed that the man killed at the bar, in the Hippodrome area of the capital popular with expatriates, was a French national.
One of the Malian victims is believed to have been a police officer, and the other a security guard, our correspondent says.
Source:BBC
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