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At least 20 dead as Al-Qaeda gunmen attack hotel in Burkina Faso
[IsraelTimes] Armed men storm Ouagadougou hotel popular with Westerners; La Belle France calls incident a 'terrorist attack'At least 20 people have been killed and another 15 maimed in an ongoing assault on a hotel in the capital of Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... on Friday night, a hospital chief told AFP. "For the dead, we do not have a precise figure, but there are at least 20 dead," said Robert Sangare, the head of Yalgado Ouedraogo hospital. "We have had at least 15 maimed with bullet wounds and others who suffered injuries during the panic to escape." An Al-Qaeda affiliate grabbed credit for the attack on the four-star Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou. The "mujahideen brothers" of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb "broke into a restaurant of one of the biggest hotels in the capital of Burkina Faso, and are now entrenched and the festivities are continuing with the enemies of the religion," the SITE Intelligence Group quoted an Arabic-language AQIM message as saying. The French embassy called the assault a "terrorist attack" and the US Embassy in Ouagadougou tweeted: "We are closely following the situation downtown." Sporadic exchanges of fire between the attackers and security forces could be heard near the hotel in the city center, an AFP news hound said, in an attack that began around 7:45 p.m. GMT. An News Agency that Dare Not be Named news hound near the scene said that several cars were also ablaze outside the 147-room Splendid Hotel in downtown Ouagadougou. The AP news hound saw an armored vehicle with security forces arrive nearly three hours after the attack. A video uploaded to YouTube claimed to document the attack from near the hotel.
"But we know that the gunnies won't get out of the hotel alive," he said. "Our country is not for jihadists or terrorists. They got it wrong." While Burkina Faso has largely been spared the violence wracked by Islamic bad boy groups in Mali, a Romanian national was kidnapped last April. Jihadists have attacked hotels before in neighboring Mali, including a devastating attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in November that left 20 people dead. Burkina Faso, a largely Muslim country, has been in 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 gunnies stormed the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou's business district, burning cars outside and firing in the air to drive back crowds before security forces arrived, prompting an intense exchange of gunfire. The hotel is sometimes used by French troops with Operation Barkhane, a force based in Chad and set up to combat Islamist forces of Evil across Africa's vast, arid Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... "It is continuing at this time. We are trying to know how many attackers they are to better coordinate our actions. Hostages have been taken. The operation could take several hours," a bigwig with the national gendarmes said, asking not to be named. Posted by: trailing wife 2016-01-16 |
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