France's BFMTV has published this video showing footage from Mali's state broadcaster, ORTM, which has scenes from the Radisson Blu in Bamako. The footage shows special forces entering the hotel as well as hostages leaving it.
The UK's Foreign Office has just tweeted updated travel advice for British nationals in Mali, advising them to stay indoors and follow the instructions of the local authorities.
The U.S. State Department has also issued guidelines for American citizens in Mali, saying that they should "shelter in place."
Hostages released from the Radisson Blu have started to talk to reporters about their experiences when gunmen stormed the luxury hotel this morning.
One of the released hostages says he heard the gunmen talking in English.
Another freed hostage described "horrible" scenes in the hotel.
"I was inside, I saw the dead bodies in the hall. It is horrible what is happening inside the hotel. I got out when the security forces enter the hotel," the witness told France 24.
U.S. special operations forces are assisting in the Mali hotel hostage situation, CNN is reporting.
A French UN staffer in Mali's capital Bamako has told Newsweek that she and her colleagues have been instructed by UN security not to leave the building.
"We want to go home but can't," the staffer said, adding that the attack on the Radisson Blu hotel reminded her of last week's attacks by IS militants on Paris.
"I feel terrified … especially since I was just coming back from Paris, after the attacks there," the UN staffer said.
The Radisson Blu has set up a hotline for family members concerned about their relatives in the hotel in Bamako, which was stormed by gunmen this morning.
Photos are emerging of hostages being freed from the Radisson Blu hotel. Some 138 people are still trapped inside.
Today's attack by what are thought to be Islamist gunmen on the Radisson Blu luxury hotel in Mali's capital Bamako is not the first deadly hotel hostage drama in the country this year. It comes after at least 13 people died in a hotel siege in the central town of Sevare in August.
Five UN workers were among the dead in the August siege at the Byblos hotel.
That siege was claimed by militants linked to the Algerian jihadi leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the former head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) who now leads his own group, Al-Murabitoun.
China's Xinhua news agency has cellphone video footage from the Radisson Blu filmed by one of the Chinese hostages.