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Dutch volunteer among the dead in Burkina Faso hotel attack

At least 28 people died in the attacks when terrorists stormed the Splendid Hotel on Friday.

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Like the extremist attacks from Paris to Jakarta, Indonesia, the assailants targeted an area where foreigners gathered to enjoy life.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the assault, local media reported.

Authorities do not know if the abductions are linked to the attack on the country’s capital by Al-Qaeda fighters on Friday night that left at least 28 people dead.

Of the 29 people dead, six were Canadians, two were French, two were Swiss and one was American.

The pastor had Riddering’s phone, and called Boyle-Riddering to say that they were at the cafe and there was gunfire, but then the line went dead.

The parents of four adopted two children in Burkina Faso, according to the missionary group. “They are an Arab and two black Africans”.

Survivors described how the militants were targeting foreign “white people” during the siege with one woman saying: “They kept coming back and forth into Cappuccino”. “I raced downstairs and once outside I saw people running through the street and four people firing on the people at Cappuccino”.

“The Burkinabe nation is in shock”, President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who took office just last month, said in a radio and television address.

The West, particularly France, considers Burkina Faso a key ally in the fight against al Qaeda.

Others killed in the terror attack included French, Canadian and Ukrainian nationals.

The Elliotts were held in high esteem by the local people.

Burkina Faso’s Interior Minister Simon Compaore said search security forces were carrying out careful searches, while at the scene of the attack a security cordon was widened today.

French troops arrived overnight from Mali to assist in the rescue.

Forces retook the hotel and restaurant Saturday some 12 hours after the attack began.

The attack, which resembles a similar November assault on an upscale hotel in Mali, served as a reminder of al-Qaida’s deadly reach into Africa.

The search continued after security forces found and killed a fourth extremist at the Hotel Yibi, the president said.

Of the Western nations, Canada appears to have suffered the biggest losses.

As the Burkina Faso hotel siege drew to a close there were reports that two Australians, a doctor and his wife, had been kidnapped in the country’s north, near the Malian border, according to Burkinabe officials.

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The West Australian couple, aged in their 80s, moved to Burkina Faso in 1972 to set up the clinic in the town of Djibo in the country’s north.

American missionary among dead in Burkina Faso hotel attack