At least 29 people, including at least 12 foreigners, were killed in an al-Qaeda attack on a top hotel in Burkina Faso, an unprecedented strike in the capital illustrating the expanding reach of regional militants.
The hours-long drama saw Burkinabe troops, backed by French special forces, battle militants — including two female fighters — who stormed the four-star Splendid Hotel, which is popular with foreigners and UN staff, and took more than 100 people hostage.
Burkina Faso declared three days of national mourning following the attack, which mirrored another al-Qaeda attack on a luxury hotel in neighboring Mali where 20 people were killed, mostly foreigners.
Photo: Reuters
“The Burkinabe nation is in shock,” Burkinabe President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said in a radio and television address.
“For the first time in its history, our country has fallen victim to a series of barbaric terrorist attacks,” he said, adding that the people of Burkina Faso would nevertheless “emerge victorious.”
The attack began about 7:45pm on Friday when an unknown number of attackers stormed the 147-room Splendid Hotel in the heart of Ouagadougou.
The hotel and its surrounding area turned into a battleground as Burkinabe troops, backed by French forces based in the city under a regional counterterrorism initiative, launched an attempt to retake the hotel about 2:00am.
A total of 29 people were killed in the attack on the hotel and a nearby restaurant, including six Canadians, two French and two Swiss nationals as well as an American and a citizen of Portugal.
Burkinabe Minister of the Interior Simon Compaore said the bodies of three “very young” militants had been identified, all of them men.
A security source said earlier that at least four attackers had been killed, two of them women.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed the attack on behalf of an affiliate, saying the strike on the former French colony was in “revenge against France and the disbelieving West”, according to a statement carried by US-based monitoring group SITE.
AQIM said the militants were from the al-Murabitoun group of notorious Algerian extremist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
French President Francois Hollande led international condemnation of what he described as an “odious and cowardly attack.”
Also on Saturday, the Burkinabe government said that two Australians were kidnapped on Friday in the northern Baraboule region, near the border with Niger and Mali.
Malian militant group Ansar Dine told reporters the couple were being held by militants from the al-Qaeda-linked “Emirate of the Sahara.”
The pair had been running a surgical clinic in the north of the country since 1972, and no reason has been given for their kidnapping, a statement from their family said.
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