Burkina Faso recently held its first presidential election since a coup earlier past year with Roch Kabore taking office. He said he had been in touch by phone with other employees and that more than a dozen of them were in hiding.
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Burkina Faso’s Interior Minister Simon Compaore said security forces were carrying out careful searches, while at the scene of the attack a security cordon was widened on Sunday. Among those freed was the country’s Minister of Public Works, Clement Sawadogo. Three attackers were killed at the hotel and a fourth was killed when security forces cleared out a second hotel nearby. Friday’s assault on the Splendid Hotel, frequented by foreigners, diplomats and well-to-do Burkinabes, appears to change that.
In a separate incident two Australian humanitarian workers were kidnapped by extremists in northern Burkina Faso. A young black woman with dreadlocks and young Arabs entered the cafe shouting Allahu akhbar (Arabic for God is great), said Issouf Ouattara, who was at the cafe where 10 people were killed in the gunfi re. “After about 20 minutes the situation calmed dow and then the fi ring started again and I think this time it was the police”, said another witness Inoussa Diarra.
Gunfire could still be heard outside the hotel early Saturday as Burkinabe forces moved through the building. Onlookers were kept far away from the fi ghting that continued into daylight. Our country is not for jihadists or terrorists.
The US State Department has said one American was also killed. “They got it wrong”.
The attack, which began around 7:30 p.m. Friday, was the first of its kind in Burkina Faso, a largely Muslim country that had managed to avoid the kinds of jihadist attacks that have destabilized neighboring Mali since 2012.
Fire and smoke rise from the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where suspected Islamist fighters were holding hostages on January 15. At least 15 other people were seriously wounded by bullets and undergoing treatment at the Yalgado Ouedraogo hospital, he said.
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“These truly barbaric criminal acts carried out against innocent people, claimed by the criminal organization al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) seek to destabilize our country and its republican institutions, and to undermine efforts to build a democratic, quiet and prosperous nation”, said Kabore.
