Gunmen stormed a luxury hotel packed with foreigners in Mali's capital Bamako on Friday, taking 170 hostages in a former French colony that has been battling rebels allied to al Qaeda for several years. The French newspaper Le Monde quoted the Malian security ministry as saying at least three hostages had been killed. The raid on the Radisson Blu hotel, which lies just west of the city centre near government ministries and diplomatic offices in the former French colony, comes a week after militants killed 129 people in Paris. The identity of the Bamako gunmen, or the group to which they belong, is not known.