In Friday’s siege, Al-Qaida-linked militants killed people staying at the Splendid Hotel, and the nearby Cappuccino Cafe.
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Security forces entered the hotel early Saturday and freed 126 hostages, half of whom were hospitalized, according to Burkina Faso’s foreign minister, Alpha Barry.
“It was disgusting, people were sleeping and there was blood everywhere”.
French President Francois Hollande “declared his complete support for President Kabore and to the Burkinabe people in the despicable and cowardly attack that has hit Ouagadougou”, his office said in a statement.
Richard Lugg, who studied medicine with Ken Elliott at the University of Western Australia in the couple’s hometown of Perth, described him as a friendly and dedicated man who had given a lifetime of service to the people of Burkina Faso.
A soldier stand guards outside the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016. Paris pledged to send forensic experts to help investigate the attack, and a French court opened an investigation for murder and attempted murder.
“We are saddened by the loss of lives, specifically Canadians, and also all the lives that were impacted by the situation”, she said. She said they shook people by the foot to see if they were alive, and if they were, they shot.
Burkina Faso is a largely Muslim country though it is home to a number of French citizens as a former colony of France.
According to the message from the American embassy, there were “reports of fire and gunfire in the area of Hotel Splendid and Café restaurant Cappuccino”. Islamic extremists in the region have long targeted French interests, incensed by France’s military footprint on the continent more than half a century after independence.
French special forces also were on hand early Saturday.
The horror closely mirrored the siege of a top hotel in Bamako, Mali, in November that left 20 people dead and shattered the sense of security in the capital of a nation whose countryside has always been scarred by extremism.
An American missionary was among the 29 killed in an Al-Qaeda attack in the West African nation of Burkina Faso Friday night, an unprecedented strike in the capital illustrating the expanding reach of regional jihadists.
The West Australian couple, in their 80s, moved to Burkina Faso in 1972 to set up the clinic in the town of Djibo in the country’s north. Terrorism has historically been rare, but last April a Romanian national was kidnapped in the first attack of its kind in the country.
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Impoverished Burkina Faso has been seized by growing political turmoil since the longstanding-but-loathed president Blaise Compaoré was ousted in a popular uprising in late 2014.
