Amnesty says photographer, driver die in Burkina Faso attack

Three people who attacked a café and hotel in Burkina Faso on Friday are still on the run, the French Prime Minister has said. Eight Burkinabes, six Canadians, three Ukrainians and two French people were killed, among others.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who was elected in November, said the Burkinabé people were in shock from the attack.

A foreign survivor of the assault to the Cafe Cappuccino is assisted in Ouagadougou on January 15, 2016.

“We commit ourselves to work with the countries within our ECOWAS region to ensure that our citizens can live in peace and security”, the statement said. That day, shots were heard on Kwame Nkrumah Avenue, near Splendid Hotel and the Cappuccino Restaurant, frequented by expatriates.

The violent foursome were killed by security forces, but police are looking for their accomplices.

The attack marks the biggest terrorist incident in Burkina Faso’s history, and is a major escalation of Islamist militancy in West Africa.

But Burkina Faso authorities on Wednesday insisted that only three jihadis carried out the attacks and were killed, although more accomplices are being sought.

The US State department has said an American also died.

Alaoui was in Burkina Faso for a photography assignment on women’s rights.

The Franco-Moroccan artist and photographer Leila Alaoui, seriously wounded by gunfire, died Monday in Ouagadougou, after succumbing to her wounds.

Some guests returned to the Splendid Hotel to pick up their luggage and other belongings left behind when guests fled for their lives when the gunmen began firing to kill as many people as possible.

It was then that Burkinabe and French forces realised the attackers had been hiding at the restaurant.

Both were parked outside the Cappucino cafe, opposite the luxury Splendid Hotel, one of the militants’ targets, the group said.

They were named as Battar al Ansari, Abu Muhammad al Buqali al Ansari and Ahmed al Fulani al Ansari.

The French parliament has observed a minute’s silence in their memory. Special forces from the former colonizer came during the overnight siege from their base in neighboring Mali to help Burkina Faso’s military put an end to the killings.

In another reminder of the country’s fragile security situation, an elderly Australian couple were kidnapped on Friday in the northern Baraboule region, near the border with Niger and Mali.