How extremists wreaked havoc in Burkina Faso
The attacks began Friday evening, before the nightly curfew. The sun had set; it was dark outside. A handful of gunmen carrying heavy assault rifles appeared without warning and descended on a popular hotel and cafe in Ouagadougou, the Burkina Faso capital.
Over the next 15 hours, the turbanclad assailants shot people at close range and took dozens of hostages, many of them foreigners providing humanitarian relief in the impoverished former French colony. When the killing finally ended Saturday morning, at least 28 people were dead, including six Canadian aid workers — a married couple, two of their adult children and two others — in Burkina Faso to help renovate and restore schools, church buildings and an orphanage.
An African affiliate of terrorist outfit al-Qaida, called al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), claimed responsibility for Friday’s unprovoked attacks, calling them “revenge against France and the disbelieving West” and meant to “punish the Cross-worshippers for their crimes against our people in Central Africa, Mali and other lands of the Muslims,” according to reports.
Arriving in vehicles at the late supper hour, the jihadists ran toward the fivestorey, 147-room Splendid Hotel in downtown Ouagadougou. Some of the assailants appeared to be children, struggling to keep their large rifles steady.
Inside a hotel banquet room, dinner was being served for some 200 members of the Agency for Aerial Navigation Safety in Africa and Madagascar. Other hotel guests were sitting in the lobby or passing time in the casino when gunmen stormed past the hotel’s unguarded entrance, gaining easy entry. They began shooting people, and taking hostages. Some of the jihadists shouted “Allahu Akhbar” — God is the Greatest — as they fired their weapons.
Across a wide boulevard from the hotel, assailants shot up and set fire to the Cappuccino Cafe, a busy French-style patisserie that features a long, street-side outdoor terrace, where people gather and while away the warm evenings. Assailants were seen running from the Splendid Hotel to the cafe and back again, firing automatic rifles.
Some cafe patrons tried to escape into toilets; others made their way to the cafe building’s rooftop. A bartender told Associated Press that gunmen shot and killed wounded patrons who lay helpless and crying on the cafe floor.
“They kept coming back. You’d think it was over, then they’d come back and shoot more people. They would come back and see if the white people were moving and then they would shoot them again,” one survivor told Reuters.
Local police and a number of French commandos arrived and a stand-off ensued, lasting into the early hours Saturday.
France has special forces in Burkina Faso, formerly known as Upper Volta, to protect its embassy and commercial interests, and it keeps troops in neighbouring countries, including Mali; some were called to assist in Ouagadougou, French President Francois Hollande confirmed.
Westerners were primary targets inside the hotel and at the cafe, according to witnesses who survived the attacks. Some played dead as the carnage continued. Dozens of people remained locked inside hotel staterooms.
The attacks were unprecedented for Ouagadougou, a dusty administrative and cultural centre of about 1.5 million people. Known as a calm, even dreary city, Ouagadougou hosts hundreds of foreign civilians working for embassies and relief agencies, many of them faithbased.
The city was once home to a significant Catholic population, and its 80-year-old Catholic cathedral is still one of the largest houses of Christian worship in western Africa.
As the standoff continued Saturday morning, more security forces arrived. An intense firefight near the Splendid Hotel lasted about 40 minutes, according to eyewitness accounts.
Finally, at around dawn, local and French soldiers managed to take control of the ruined cafe and the hotel, killing three of the assailants and securing the release of 126 hostages. A fourth gunman was killed inside another downtown hotel.
A Burkinabé police officer and a local civilian were also killed in another part of the country, when men described as “rebels” forced their way inside a police station. And an Australian couple who ran a surgical clinic in the country’s north were reported kidnapped Friday.
The attacks proved that Burkina Faso is as vulnerable to sudden terrorist activity as any other country in western Africa. In November, AQIM militants stormed a luxury hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali, killing 20.
Foreigners from 18 different countries were killed in Ouagadougou. The six Canadians who died had been working with the Quebecbased charity Le Centre Amitié de Solidarité Internationale de la Région des Appalaches (CASIRA). As many as 12 people had volunteered and raised $4,250 each to travel to Burkina Faso and work on various restoration projects in the country. The group arrived in December, and was scheduled to return to Canada next month.
In a statement, CASIRA offered its “deepest sympathies to the families” of the deceased and assured “them of its support.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a statement Saturday, saying “Canada strongly condemns the deadly terrorist attacks that took place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.… We are deeply saddened by these senseless acts of violence on innocent civilians. We have offered assistance to the Burkinabé authorities in their investigation of this terrible crime.”