OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO—Burkina Faso and
French forces killed four extremists Saturday and freed more than 126
people to end the seizure of a luxury hotel by al-Qaida-linked militants, Burkina Faso officials said.
In addition to the four jihadists, at least 23
people were killed in the attack at the Splendid Hotel and a nearby
cafe in Ouagadougou, the capital, the president said. Three attackers
were killed at the hotel and a fourth was killed when security forces
cleared out a second hotel nearby.
Two of the three attackers at the Splendid
Hotel were identified as female, President Roch Marc Christian Kabore
said on national radio.
A spokesman for Canada’s Global Affairs
Department said it was trying to determine if any Canadians were caught
up in the attack, but there was no immediate indication any were
involved.
In a separate development, an Austrian doctor
and his wife were kidnapped Friday night by extremists in Burkina Faso’s
north near its border with Mali, Abi Ouattara, security ministry
spokeswoman, said Saturday.
The ministry did not have immediate
information on how long the two Austrians had been in northern Burkina
Faso, where they were doing volunteer work. Jihadis took the two from
the town of Baraboule in the Soum province in Burkina Faso’s Sahel
region, Ouattara said.
There was no immediate confirmation of the
kidnapping from Austria’s Foreign Ministry. “We are trying to look into
the matter as quickly as possible,” spokesman Thomas Schnoell told the
Austria Press Agency.
In the capital, the Islamic extremists stormed the Splendid Hotel and a nearby cafe Friday night.
Gunfire ramped up early Saturday as gendarme
and military forces fought to take back the building which had been
blackened by a fire during the assault. The security forces took control
of the Splendid Hotel and were searching nearby hotels to be sure no
other extremists were hiding. The search continued even after security
forces found and killed a fourth extremist at the Hotel Yibi, the
president said.
About 33 people were wounded and 126 people
were freed after the morning call to prayer signalled a new day in this
West African nation, said Minister of Security and Internal Affairs
Simon Compaore.
Cars and motorbikes were burned, and
overturned chairs and shards of glass lay scattered near the hotel.
Onlookers were kept far away from the fighting that continued into
daylight.
The harrowing attack was launched by the same extremists behind a similar siege at an upscale hotel in Bamako, Mali in November that left 20 dead.
Dozens of French forces arrived overnight from
neighbouring Mali to aid in the rescue. One U.S. military member was
embedded with French forces at the scene, and the United States was
working to help provide France with surveillance and reconnaissance
help, according to a U.S. senior defence official who spoke on condition
of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter
publicly.
An Al Qaeda affiliate known as AQIM, or Al
Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, claimed responsibility online as the
attack was ongoing in downtown Ouagadougou at the 147-room hotel,
according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
In a message posted in Arabic on the
extremists’ “Muslim Africa” Telegram account, it said fighters “broke
into a restaurant of one of the biggest hotels in the capital of Burkina
Faso, and are now entrenched and the clashes are continuing with the
enemies of the religion.” Fighters who spoke by phone later “asserted
the fall of many dead Crusaders,” AQIM said, according to SITE.
Burkina Faso’s Internal Affairs Minister Simon
Compaore said that 10 bodies were found inside the Cappuccino Cafe, a
restaurant located next to the Splendid Hotel.
“We know that the gunmen won’t get out of the
hotel alive,” said one witness, who gave only his first name, Gilbert.
“Our country is not for jihadists or terrorists. They got it wrong.”
Burkina Faso, a largely Muslim country, had
for years been largely spared from the violence carried out by Islamic
extremist groups who were abducting foreigners for ransom in Mali and
Niger. Then last April, a Romanian national was kidnapped in an attack
that was the first of its kind in Burkina Faso.
The country also has been in growing political
turmoil since its longtime president was ousted in a popular uprising
in late 2014. Last fall members of a presidential guard launched a coup
that lasted only about a week. The transitional government returned to
power until Burkina Faso’s November election ushered in new leaders.
The hotel attack in Mali in November also was
claimed by a leader of AQIM, who said it had been carried out as a
declaration of unity with Algerian militant Moktar Belmoktar’s extremist
group Al-Mourabitoun, according to an audio speech that was distributed
by SITE at the time. Belmoktar was a former leader in AQIM before
starting his own group, which now has merged back with Al Qaeda.
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