Family seek answers over African kidnapping of 2 Australians

The West Australian couple, aged in their 80s, moved to Burkina Faso in 1972 to set up the clinic in the town of Djibo in the country’s north. And when they came out they started a fire.

“The perpetrators of the horrific attack in Ouagadougou on Friday night which deliberately killed and injured dozens of people from many nationalities and religions, show an utter disregard for fundamental principles of humanity”, Alioune Tine, Amnesty International West Africa director, said.

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

“These truly barbaric criminal acts carried out against innocent people, claimed by the criminal organization al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) seek to destabilize our country and its republican institutions, and to undermine efforts to build a democratic, quiet and prosperous nation”, said Kabore.

The attackers were members of the Al-Murabitoun group based in Mali and run by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, SITE said.

“The commonest things we would do I suppose are hernias, bladder stones, we do all sorts of tumors — you name it, we do it because there’s nowhere else to do it”, he said. Islamic extremists in the region have long targeted French interests, incensed by France’s military footprint on the continent more than half a century after independence.

In November, an AQIM attack on a hotel in Bamako, capital of neighbouring Mali, left 19 people dead.

“It appears that Pastor Valentin was somehow separated from Mike during the attack and hid somewhere in the Cappuccino cafe”, the missionary group said.

Burkina Faso is part of the G5 Sahel grouping that counts the fight against terrorism as part of its remit. Inside, Burkinabe and French security officials were conducting an investigation.

The hotel and its surrounding area turned into a battleground as Burkina Faso troops, backed by French forces based in the city under a regional counterterrorism initiative, launched an attempt to retake the hotel around 2am. Now though, it appears Burkina, too, has been turned into a place where Westerners are at high risk.

A family statement on Sunday says surgeon Ken Elliott and his wife Jocelyn disappeared on Friday night. Then last April, a Romanian national was kidnapped in an attack that was the first of its kind in the country.

The nine-year-old son of the cafe owner has been confirmed as one of the dead.

“According to our information, the kidnappers’ objective is to take the hostages towards Mali”, the source added, declining to give further details.