Alassane Ouattara, president of the Ivory Coast, was to hold an emergency cabinet meeting on Sunday to respond to the attack by Al Qaeda. A bearded gunman approached two children and allegedly spoke in Arabic.
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“We could hear them shooting so we could hear that they were going right next to where we were”.
Bakayoko said “three terrorists were killed” in the assault. At least six armed men attacked beachgoers outside three hotels Sunday in Grand-Bass… The Tunisian attack was claimed by the group that calls itself “Islamic State” (IS), but the Tunisian government said it believed that AQIM was behind it.
The raid was the third high-profile attack by Islamist militants in West Africa since November, but the first on Ivory Coast, the economic powerhouse of the French-speaking region.
A barman told the Reuter news agency four of the attackers had arrived at the popular weekend resort in Grand Bassam in a Ford saloon vehicle and ordered drinks. “You can continue with your daily activities as our forces control the situation and security is ensured throughout the nation”.
A photo taken by a witness at the scene shows the victims of a fusillade being loaded on a pick-up truck in front of a hotel in Grand-Bassam, on 13 March, 2016 after heavily armed gunmen opened fire. The newspaper noted that French authorities warned people weeks ago of a possible attack in Ivory Coast or Senegal. The French government had earlier said just one of its citizens had died.
Other foreigners among the 16 killed in the attack by Islamic extremists include people from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, France and Mali.
The U.S. ambassador to the Ivory Coast was not in the country at the time of the attack having left to attend a conference in Washington led by Secretary of State John Kerry.
“I saw one of the attackers from far away”, said Abbas El-Roz, a Lebanese salesman, who was in the pool of a hotel when the attackers struck.
Jacques Able, who identified himself as the owner of Etoile du Sud said one person had been killed at the hotel.
Both of those attacks were, like the Ivory Coast attack, claimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and suggested that militants were extending their reach southwards from their traditional zones of operation in the Sahara and Sahel regions.
SITE Intelligence Group, a USA monitor, said al-Qaeda’s North African affiliate had claimed responsibility for the attack in the former French colonial capital, a resort popular with Western expatriates.
Ryan Cummings, director at Signal Risk, an Africa-focused risk management company, said the recent attacks were evidence of a resurgence.
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France is sending two top ministers to Abidjan to express its solidarity with Ivory Coast after the deadly attack on a beach resort that killed at least 16 people on Sunday.
