#Ouagadougou : #Burkina Faso: More than 29 people, many of them foreigners, were killed in an attack overnight on a top hotel in the capital of Burkina Faso, the latest country to be drawn into a regional jihadist battle against the West and its allies.France and Switzerland confirmed that two citizens from each country were among the dead — all of them killed at the restaurant — as Burkina Faso announced three days of national mourning.
Compaore said the bodies of three “very young” jihadists had been identified, all of them men.
A security source said earlier that at least four attackers had been killed, two of them women.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed the attack on behalf of an affiliate, saying the strike on the former French colony was in “revenge against France and the disbelieving West”, according to a statement carried by US-based monitoring group SITE.
AQIM said the gunmen were from the Al-Murabitoun group of notorious Algerian extremist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
The attack will heighten concerns that jihadist groups are casting their net wider in search of targets in west Africa, two months after a siege at a luxury hotel in neighbouring Mali, where 20 people were killed, against mostly foreigners.
AQIM and Al-Murabitoun jointly claimed that attack.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who took office just last month, a year after a popular uprising ousted longtime leader Blaise Compaore, called on his fellow citizens to show “courage”.
Burkina Faso has “never caved in under any circumstances and it’s not going to start now,” he said.
‘There was blood everywhere’
The attack began around 7:45 pm on Saturday when an unknown number of attackers stormed the 147-room Splendid hotel in the heart of Ouagadougou.
An AFP reporter saw three gunmen wearing turbans firing on Avenue Kwame Nkrumah, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. Another witness reported seeing four assailants.by Agencies.
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