  Entanglement between two macroscopic atomic ensembles induced by measurement
on an ancillary light system has proven to be a powerful method for engineering
quantum memories and quantum state transfer. Here we investigate the
feasibility of such methods for generation, manipulation and detection of
genuine multipartite entanglement between mesoscopic atomic ensembles. Our
results extend in a non trivial way the EPR entanglement between two
macroscopic gas samples reported experimentally in [B. Julsgaard, A. Kozhekin,
and E. Polzik, Nature {\bf 413}, 400 (2001)]. We find that under realistic
conditions, a second orthogonal light pulse interacting with the atomic
samples, can modify and even reverse the entangling action of the first one
leaving the samples in a separable state.
