Burkina Faso Restaurant Attack 'Kills 17'

World | August 14, 2017, Monday // 09:44
Bulgaria: Burkina Faso Restaurant Attack 'Kills 17' pixabay.com

Seventeen people have been killed and eight wounded in a "terrorist attack" in the centre of the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, the government says, reported BBC. 

Three gunmen opened fire on customers seated outside a restaurant, witnesses were quoted as saying.

Security forces killed two attackers, the authorities said, but some people are still reported to be trapped in the building.

A jihadist attack on a cafe nearby left 30 people dead in January last year.

There are fears that the attack is the work of one of the affiliates of al-Qaeda that are active in the Sahel region.

The shooting began shortly after 21:00 (21:00 GMT) on Sunday on Ouagadougou's busy Kwame Nkrumah Avenue.

The Aziz Istanbul Restaurant appears to have been at the centre of the attack.

Turkey's foreign ministry has confirmed that one of the dead was Turkish. Unconfirmed reports say another was French.

The attack is similar to one in January 2016, when gunmen targeted the Splendid Hotel and the Cappuccino restaurant, only 200m further along Kwame Nkrumah Avenue from the scene of the latest attack.

More than 170 people were taken hostage and 30 were killed. The al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group said it carried out that attack.

Burkina Faso is part of the Sahel region, which includes Mali where Islamist groups have been active since 2012.

A multinational force run by African nations to target jihadist forces in the Sahel region has been established, but it will not be operational until later this year.

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Tags: jihadist attack, Burkina Faso, attack, attentat, al-Qaeda

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