Updates to Burkina Faso Hotel Attack: At least 23 people dead

“Over the last 15 months the people of Burkina Faso have shown enormous courage and determination in peacefully protecting their constitution, facing down a coup d’Etat and electing a new government”. (Arabic for “God is great”), according ti Issouf Ouattara, who was at the cafe where 10 people were killed in the gunfire.

Under attack… Explosions outside the Splendid Hotel in downtown Ouagadougou.

Hammond also advised British nationals in Burkina Faso to avoid the area where the attack took place and to follow travel advice offered by the British government.

President Muhammadu Buhari has assured President Roch Marc Kabore and the people of Burkina Faso of Nigeria’s solidarity and support as they grapple with the aftermath of Friday night’s terrorist attack on Ouagadougou.

UPDATE: Burkina Faso’s Minister of Security and Internal Affairs Simon Compaore says that the two foreigners kidnapped in the country’s north are Australian, not Austrian as the ministry’s spokeswoman had announced earlier.

Riddering leaves behind four children, two of whom were adopted from Burkina Faso.

Bodies of three of the jihadist attackers have been identified with a major rescue search also underway for survived hostages. Three attackers were killed at the hotel and a fourth was killed when security forces cleared out a second hotel nearby.

At least 27 people, including four assailants, have been killed and 126 hostages freed in the operation backed by the French forces to retake the Splendid Hotel, in the city centre, security officials have told Associated Press news agency. Jihadis took the two from the town of Baraboule in the Soum province in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region, Ouattara said. “That makes the country a symbol of progress, which is what those people want to destroy”, said Cynthia Ohayon, a security analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“They started shooting, shooting, and everybody lay down on the ground”, said Mariette to the BBC, after she escaped from the hotel with her younger sister.

Spokesman Abi Ouattara gave the toll after forces freed 126 people and killed three jihadis, ending the operation against the extremists at the Splendid Hotel and nearby cafe in Ouagadougou.

“What’s making our job more hard is that they’ve rigged the access to the upper floors”, a Burkinabe gendarme officer said. And they even came to touch our feet to check if we were alive. Islamic extremists in the region have long targeted French interests, incensed by France’s military footprint on the continent more than a half century after independence.

A fire also broke out in the hall of the hotel, in Ouagadougou’s business district, and the flames then began spreading inside and out.

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. He was a missionary that helped run an orphanage in the Africa working with the organization.