Here's what we know so far about the siege in Mali:
-- The attack began at 0700 GMT, according to Reuters.
-- As many as 10 gunmen have taken 170 people -- 140 guests and 30 employees -- hostage at the American-owned Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital, Bamako.
-- The gunmen shouted "Allahu Akbar," (God is great) as they stormed the hotel, a security source told Reuters.
-- At least three hostages are dead, according to an unnamed Malian minister who spoke to the AFP news agency.
-- The gunmen have released some hostages able to recite verses of the Quran, according to Reuters' security source.
-- AFP also says that around a dozen hostages have been escorted from the hotel.
-- A Malian minister told AFP that Mali security forces have stormed the hotel.
Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest person, has tweeted to deny reports in some media outlets that he was one of the hostages in the Mali hotel siege.
Dangote says he was in Mali yesterday.
AFP say at least three people killed in the Mali hotel siege. It's still not clear to which group the gunmen belong.
Some 170 people have been taken hostage at a luxury hotel in Mali's capital Bamako by gunmen shouting "Islamic slogans," Reuters is reporting.
The identity of the group to which the Bamako gunmen belong is not yet known.
Some 10 gunmen are thought to have stormed the Radisson Blu hotel, which is near government ministries and diplomatic offices.
The hostages include French nationals, "at least seven" Chinese people and six Turkish Airlines staff members, reports are saying.
There are unconfirmed reports that several people have been killed.
The New York Times World Twitter account tweeted this AP photo of people fleeing the hotel after it was stormed by militants.
The Paris prosecutor says that a passport belonging to Hasna Aitboulahcen has been found in a handbag in an apartment in Saint-Denis raided by police this week.
Aitboulahcen has been named by police sources as the female suicide bomber who blew herself up following an exchange with police at the start of the raid.
The Paris prosecutor's office warned that Aitboulahcen has not yet been formally identified.
French news sites are reporting that the suspected ringleader of the November 13 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was seen on closed-circuit video on the night of the attacks at the Croix de Chavaux metro station in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil.
BFM TV reports that its sources say Abaaoud was seen on video footage from two cameras at the metro station at around 10 p.m. on November 13, at the time when the massacre at the Bataclan stadium was ongoing.
The Croix de Chavaux metro station is 250 meters from the place where a black Seat car believed to have been used by some of the Paris attackers was found. Several Kalashnikovs were found in the car, French judicial sources said.
The Paris prosecutor's office says that a third body has been found in the apartment raided by police during a search for suspects in the November 13 Paris attacks, AP are reporting.
The office has said that the body is that of a woman but her identity is not yet clear.
Could Salah Abdeslam, the suspected terrorist who remains the target of a massive police hunt after the November 13 attacks in Paris, also be on the run from IS?
Investigators are increasingly led to believe that Abdeslam panicked on November 13 and did not carry out the grisly assignments given him by IS, according to The Independent.
Abdeslam had wandered around Paris for seven hours on the night of November 13 and police have traced a phone call he made at 10:30 p.m. while the massacre at the Bataclan stadium was under way. He had asked friends to drive from Brussels to pick him up.
"Nothing [in Abdeslam’s movements] answers the description of a pre-planned escape," one French police source told The Independent.
"It is possible he panicked or chickened out of killing himself. It is possible that he was disgusted by what he had been involved in or that his explosive suicide belt failed to detonate."
Germany's intelligence chief has warned of a "terrorist world war," the BBC reports.
Hans-Georg Maassen, head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency, told the BBC that IS had made Europe its enemy and European countries had to "assume something like Paris can happen any time."
The Independent has obtained the text of a draft United Nations Security Council resolution to declare war against the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq.
The resolution authorizes "all necessary measures" against IS in Syria and Iraq, could be adopted in days.
The text of the draft resolution, shared with the The Independent, calls on member states "with the capacity to do so" to “take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, on the territory under the control of Isil [IS] in Syria and Iraq, to redouble and co-ordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by Isil… and to eradicate the safe haven they have established in Iraq and Syria."
The draft resolution goes on to say that, by "its violent extremist ideology, its terrorist acts, its continued gross systematic and widespread attacks directed against civilians,", IS "constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security."