He also reiterated USA commitment to working with others in West Africa to fight terrorists who want to undermine efforts to “build tolerant and inclusive societies”.
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AQIM, which originated in Algeria but has since spread into sub-Saharan Africa, has previously claimed responsibility for the November 2015 attacks on hotels in neighbouring Mali and this January’s killings in Burkina Faso.
The army was tightly controlling access to the area, while the French embassy told its nationals to stay away from the attack scene “to avoid obstructing security forces”.
Jacques Able, who identified himself as the owner of Etoile du Sud said one person had been killed at the hotel.
The Latest on Ivory Coast beach attack.
Among the victims was German Henrike Grohs, 51, director of the local German cultural association in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s capital.
Three militants also died in the attack on the resort town, a UNESCO heritage site of crumbling colonial-era buildings.
Inside a hotel crowded with expats, an AFP journalist saw a bullet lodged in the front of the bar refrigerator and a large pool of blood on the floor.
Carine Boa, a Belgian-Ivorian teacher at an global high school in Abidjan, was at one of the beach bars with her two sons when the gunmen arrived. “The United States stands together with Turkey, a NATO Ally and valued partner, as we confront the scourge of terrorism”.
“I haven’t heard anything from my son and my sister”, said Marie-Claire Yapi, in tears as she held her two-year-old son in her arms.
Security forces “neutralized” six attackers, Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said in a statement on state-run broadcaster RTI1.
“He had a Kalashnikov and a grenade belt”.
The strike, which targeted three hotels in the former French colonial capital that is popular with Western expatriates, also killed 14 civilians and two special forces troops, he said.
Both attacks and the one in the Ivory Coast were claimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), suggesting that militants were extending their reach southwards from their traditional zones of operation in the Sahara and Sahel regions.
“The Ivory Coast will not allow itself to be intimidated by terrorists”, Ouattara said in a statement broadcast on radio and television. “She loved her work and was full of energy and ideas”, said Johannes Ebert, Secretary-General of the Goethe Institute. “I don’t know where he is”. One of the children then knelt and started praying.
In November, a siege on a hotel in the Malian capital of Bamako killed 27 hostages, including one American.
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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French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve will travel to Ivory Coast on Tuesday to offer logistical support and intelligence, French diplomatic sources said. “We are going to reinforce the surveillance”.
