OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina
Faso (AP) — Burkina Faso and French forces killed four extremists
Saturday and freed more than 126 people to end the seizure of a luxury
hotel by al-Qaida-linked militants, Burkina Faso officials said.
In addition to
the four jihadists, at least 23 people were killed in the attack at the
Splendid Hotel and a nearby cafe in Ouagadougou, the capital, the
president said. Three attackers were killed at the hotel and a fourth
was killed when security forces cleared out a second hotel nearby.
Two
of the three attackers at the Splendid Hotel were identified as female,
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said on national radio.
In a
separate development, an Austrian doctor and his wife were kidnapped
Friday night by extremists in Burkina Faso's north near its border with
Mali, Abi Ouattara, security ministry spokeswoman, said Saturday.
The
ministry did not have immediate information on how long the two
Austrians had been in northern Burkina Faso, where they were doing
volunteer work. Jihadis took the two from the town of Baraboule in the
Soum province in Burkina Faso's Sahel region, Ouattara said.
There
was no immediate confirmation of the kidnapping from Austria's Foreign
Ministry. "We are trying to look into the matter as quickly as
possible," spokesman Thomas Schnoell told the Austria Press Agency.
Gunfire
ramped up early Saturday as gendarme and military forces fought to take
back the building which had been blackened by a fire during the
assault. The security forces took control of the Splendid Hotel and were
searching nearby hotels to be sure no other extremists were hiding. The
search continued even after security forces found and killed a fourth
extremist at the Hotel Yibi, the president said.
About
33 people were wounded and 126 people were freed after the morning call
to prayer signaled a new day in this West African nation, said Minister
of Security and Internal Affairs Simon Compaore.
Cars
and motorbikes were burned, and overturned chairs and shards of glass
lay scattered near the hotel. Onlookers were kept far away from the
fighting that continued into daylight.
The
harrowing attack was launched by the same extremists behind a similar
siege at an upscale hotel in Bamako, Mali in November that left 20 dead.
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Dozens of French forces
arrived overnight from neighboring Mali to aid in the rescue. One U.S.
military member was embedded with French forces at the scene, and the
United States was working to help provide France with surveillance and
reconnaissance help, according to a U.S. senior defense official who
spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss
the matter publicly.
An
al-Qaida affiliate known as AQIM, or al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb,
claimed responsibility online as the attack was ongoing in downtown
Ouagadougou at the 147-room hotel, according to the SITE Intelligence
Group.
In a message posted in Arabic on the extremists' "Muslim
Africa" Telegram account, it said fighters "broke into a restaurant of
one of the biggest hotels in the capital of Burkina Faso, and are now
entrenched and the clashes are continuing with the enemies of the
religion." Fighters who spoke by phone later "asserted the fall of many
dead Crusaders," AQIM said, according to SITE.
Burkina Faso's
Internal Affairs Minister Simon Compaore said that 10 bodies were found
inside the Cappuccino Cafe, a restaurant located next to the Splendid
Hotel.
"We know that the gunmen won't get out of the hotel alive,"
said one witness, who gave only his first name, Gilbert. "Our country
is not for jihadists or terrorists. They got it wrong."
Burkina Faso, a largely
Muslim country, had for years been largely spared from the violence
carried out by Islamic extremist groups who were abducting foreigners
for ransom in Mali and Niger. Then last April, a Romanian national was
kidnapped in an attack that was the first of its kind in Burkina Faso.
The
country also has been in growing political turmoil since its longtime
president was ousted in a popular uprising in late 2014. Last September
members of a presidential guard launched a coup that lasted only about a
week. The transitional government returned to power until Burkina
Faso's November election ushered in new leaders.
The
hotel attack in Mali in November also was claimed by a leader of AQIM,
who said it had been carried out as a declaration of unity with Algerian
militant Moktar Belmoktar's extremist group Al-Mourabitoun, according
to an audio speech that was distributed by SITE at the time. Belmoktar
was a former leader in AQIM before starting his own group, which now has
merged back with al-Qaida.
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