Ordinary evening brutally interrupted

Talks were not an option, says anti-terror chief

WHEN Burkina Faso anti-terrorism Commander Evrard Somda arrived with 20 men to start a fight-back against Islamist militants holed up in a smart hotel, his first decision was to seal off the area and throw away the rule book.

His training in France, Kenya, Senegal and elsewhere taught him he should be trying to make contact with the hostage-takers. A quick glance at the horror before him was enough to know this would not work.

Cars blazed in the street, bursts of gunfire echoed from the Splendid Hotel and bodies were strewn across the terrace of Cappuccino, a café-restaurant across the road popular for its European menu and free wi-fi.

“They wanted to kill the maximum number of people and for them it wasn’t a problem to die,” Somda, who arrived on the scene at 8.30pm, said in the most detailed account yet of Friday night’s assault.

But Somda realised his men could not simply storm the five-storey hotel for fear of accidentally killing civilians.

“We couldn’t just do what we wanted. We were obliged to take account of the life of the clients inside the hotel and avoid opening fire on them,” he said.

In the event, it would be nine hours before the three attackers were cornered in the nearby Bush Taxi restaurant. They fired on a troop carrier at the crossroads before a machine-gunner perched in the vehicle’s turret shot them dead.

By then, 29 civilians from at least seven countries were dead in an attack that stamped the imprint of Islamist militancy on West Africa well beyond the previous flashpoints of Mali and north-eastern Nigeria.

Officials have not yet been able to determine whether alQaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) and al Mourabitoun, groups that claimed responsibility for both attacks, used a local jihadist cell or sent fighters from northern Mali.

What is clear is that the militants selected a target to inflict maximum damage on a country emerging from a democratic transition under an elected president, Roch Marc Kabore, the first new leader since 1987.

“The intention was to hurt foreigners. It is a place where you find a lot of foreigners. That explains why they attacked it,” Security Minister Simon Compaore said.

Another feature of the Ouagadougou attack is how much time the militants had. Aqim even said the attackers made a phone call to report to the group that there were “many Crusaders dead”.

A later statement monitored by the SITE Intelligence group included a photograph of three young black men in army fatigues and carrying weapons, which it said were used in the raid.

“I was sitting in front of my boutique. Three guys passed in front of me. The tallest had a long gun. When they got to the intersection he fired in the air and the other two went into Cappuccino,” said Saly Coulibaly, who saw the attack begin around 7.30pm local time.

People inside the one-room restaurant and on the terrace had no chance. Amid the shattered glass, bullet holes and charred ruins were signs of an ordinary evening brutally interrupted.

The attackers sprayed the restaurant with bullets, set fire to cars and motorbikes before entering the Splendid Hotel.