Burkina Faso begins mourning after hotel attack

Leila Alaoui, the French-Moroccan photographer and video artist known for her poetic and unsentimental images of daily life in the Mediterranean and Middle East, died last night from injuries sustained during last week’s terrorist attack in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso.

The West African nation also announced a joint effort with neighboring Mali in the fight against Islamic extremists in the West African region.

Several people have been detained and are being questioned in connection with the weekend attack on a hotel and cafe in Burkina Faso’s capital that killed about 30 people, the country’s security minister said on Tuesday.

“Three were killed and three are still being sought”.

The national mourning began on Sunday, a day after government soldiers and French forces ended a more than 12-hour siege at the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou’s business district.

“In this kind of situation we pick up everyone who could resemble the suspects and then, bit by bit, we verify”, he said.

Neighbouring Benin’s President Thomas Boni Yayi arrived in the capital on Monday to offer his condolences to President Roch Marc Kabore, and said the West African regional bloc ECOWAS would hold an emergency summit to discuss the issue.

Two former Olympic officials, Jean-Noel Rey from Switzerland and Jean-Pascal Kinda from Burkina Faso, were killed, Swiss and Burkina Faso authorities said.

Riddering planned to meet at a cafe with people who wanted “to volunteer at the orphanage and women’s crisis center he ran with his wife, Ann Boyle-Riddering”.

Special police forces are seen during search operations following an attack by Al-Qaeda linked gunmen on January 16, 2016 in Ouagadougou.

Friday’s attack by Islamist gunmen on a four-star Ouagadougou hotel and nearby cafe left at least 29 people dead, around half of them foreigners.

All six were from Quebec and were in Burkina Faso doing humanitarian work. Other bodies were being identified.

“We’re not going to just sit on our hands”.

“I think they fell in love with Burkina Faso”, she said.

In a statement published by SITE Intelligence Group, though, al-Qaida identified three “mujahedeen brothers” as the ones responsible: Al-Battar al-Ansari, Abu Muhammad al-Buqali al-Ansari and Ahmed al-Fulani al-Ansari. We are in an asymmetric war.

The group is based in the Sahara Desert between Mali, Niger and Algeria.