In Burkina Faso2 Austrians kidnapped near border with Mali

Monsignor Pier Giorgio Debernardi told TV2000, an Italian Catholic channel, on Saturday that he and members of his charity mission chose to head to the airport when they heard the shooting.

The couple is respected by the community where they work and have dedicated their lives to caring for disadvantaged, the Elliots’ family says. Burned cars and motorbikes and overturned chairs and shards of glass lay scattered near the hotel.

Burkina Faso declared three days of national mourning following the attack, which mirrored another al-Qaeda attack on a luxury hotel in neighbouring Mali where 20 people were killed, mostly foreigners.

French President Francois Hollande denounced the “odious and cowardly attack”, with the European Union and Britain issuing similar condemnations. Next, near the northern town of Djibo, an Australian doctor and his wife were kidnapped, and their whereabouts were still unknown. “We must continue, continue to live, to act, to raise our hope, notably for future generations”.

A statement issued in Abuja on Saturday by the President’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina, said the president gave assurance in a telephone call to President Kabore on Saturday.

“The Burkinabe nation is in shock”, President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who took office just last month, said in a radio and television address.

“The situation we’re experiencing since yesterday in Burkina Faso is unprecedented”, Kabore said when he visited the scene of the attack.

The horror closely mirrored the siege of a top hotel in Bamako, Mali, in November that left 20 people dead and shattered the sense of security in the capital of a nation whose countryside has always been scarred by extremism. Carol Boyle said Michael Riddering, 45, of Cooper City, Florida, had been working in Burkina Faso since 2011.

“The country has long borders with Mali and Niger, and we know there are armed groups present on the border, so this was probably something we had coming”.

Riddering arrived early and was in the cafe with a local pastor; when the attack started, they ran in different directions, Boyle said.

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”.

So far, Twenty-nine people have been confirmed dead while thirty are injured in new figures released by Burkina Faso officials.

Security forces raided a besieged hotel in Burkina Faso and freed 126 hostages early Saturday – hours after terrorists struck under the cover of darkness.

Compaore said “three jihadists – an Arab and two black Africans – have been killed”. Local forces back by French gendarmes battle through the night and have retaken the hotel from the jihadi attackers, saving 126 hostages.

In the capital, the Islamic extremists stormed the Splendid Hotel and the Cappuccino Cafe, a restaurant located next to the hotel, Friday night. The security source said four jihadists were killed, two of them women, and that the victims were of 18 nationalities.