Al-Qaeda militants’ attack kills 29 in Burkina Faso

A small number of USA forces provided support to the military of Burkina Faso during a deadly weekend attack by al-Qaida-linked militants on a hotel and café in that nation’s capital. Kabore was elected in November in the first free elections in the country in 50 years.

Dr Ken Elliott and his wife Jocelyn, originally from WA, had been running a hospital in the country’s north in the town of Djibo, close to Burkina Faso’s border with Mali.

Security forces were only able to regain control of the Splendid Hotel on Saturday after repeatedly entering into shootouts with the Islamists, who barricaded themselves on upper floors and reportedly set up booby traps with explosives.

A total of 126 people were freed, 33 of them wounded, from the four-star Splendid hotel after security forces retook the facility and nearby Cappuccino restaurant on Saturday over 12 hours after the attack began, Interior Minister Simon Compaore told AFP.

The victims of the pogrom were said to be having drinks outside and in a popular hotel, before the tragedy struck, as their assailants screamed Allahu akhbar (Arabic for God is great) as gunned them down.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin announced that four members of a Ukrainian family were killed in the attack, including a nine-year-old child. “They got it wrong”.

Riddering went to the capital to pick up a team of missionaries visiting from the USA and stopped by Cappuccino cafe to get coffee with a friend, the group said.

In a message posted in Arabic on the militants’ “Muslim Africa” Telegram account, it said fighters had “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”.

Until recently Burkina Faso had largely escaped the tide of Islamist violence spreading in the restive Sahel region and the hotel assault will heighten fears that jihadist groups are casting their net wider in search of targets in west Africa.

Burkina Faso was better known for the role its president and officials played in mediating hostage releases when jihadists would seize foreigners for ransom in places like Niger or Mali.

In April the Romanian security chief of a mine in northern Tambao was kidnapped in a move also claimed by Belmokhtar’s Al-Murabitoun group.

Burkina Faso is only just moving on from a political crisis.

AQIM and Al-Murabitoun jointly claimed that attack.