Summary Dozens of police officers secured the area, a popular nightspot among expatriates.
Bamako (AFP) - Five people, including French and Belgian nationals, were shot dead overnight in an attack on a restaurant in the Malian capital Bamako, police and an AFP reporter on the scene said on Saturday.
"This is a terrorist attack, although we re waiting for clarification. Provisionally, there are four dead -- one French national, a Belgian and two Malians," a policeman told AFP, adding that the dead included a police officer passing at the time of the shooting.
A source at the Gabriel Toure hospital in Bamako said a third European, whose nationality was not immediately clear, had died on arrival while eight people were wounded.
Firefighters carried the body of the French national from La Terrace in Bamako s lively Hippodrome district following the attack shortly after midnight, according to an AFP correspondent who witnessed the aftermath.
In moments after the attack the body of the police officer and a guard of a private home could be seen in the street outside the restaurant, while a little further on the body of the Belgian national was also visible.
Dozens of police officers secured the area, a popular nightspot among expatriates, but the few witnesses to the attack were initially refusing to testify, fearing reprisals.
The French embassy in Bamako issued a message to all French nationals in the city to exercise caution if they had to leave their homes.
