One of the hotel security guards Kasim Haidara, who is based in Bamakko, the country's capital, said that the terrorists were screaming: "Where are the staff of Air France?"
The security guard claimed that the Islamic extremists who killed 19 people in a gun attack on a luxury hotel in Mali's capital on Friday, November 20, were hunting for Air France staff.
The terrorists shot their way past a five-man security team before turning their weapons on terrified guests at the hotel in Bamako.
One security worker, Kasim Haidara, told The Telegraph that the terrorists were specifically hunting Air France staff - quizzing a man at gunpoint about their location.
He said: "When they got up there, the terrorists asked him: 'where are the staff of Air France?'.
"He told them that they were on the seventh floor instead, and when they realised later that he had given them wrong information, they came back down and killed him."
Eyewitnesses said those who could recite verses from the Koran were allowed to leave unharmed.
The attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako began at 7am local time on Friday when two gunmen, approaching on foot, reached the entrance where five guards who had worked the nightshift were waiting to be replaced by a new team.
Another guard, Cheick Dabo, said his colleagues had just finished morning prayers and had put away their weapons - a shotgun and two pistols - when the militants struck.
He said: "We didn't see the jihadists until they started firing on us. We weren't concentrating and we didn't expect it."
Four of the guards were shot, one fatally, while Mr Dabo managed to hide under a car.
Government critics have attacked the level of security at the hotel and in the country, but interior minister Salif Traore said there was little to be done in the face of such determined attackers.
He told reporters: "They were ready to die, so the level of security is hardly important.
"The Radisson hotel had a level of security that was considered good."
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