Turkey says 1 Turk killed, another wounded in Burkina Faso attack

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Turkey

A Turkish national was among those killed in the attack in Burkina Faso by suspected jihadists, Turkey’s foreign ministry said on Monday.

The ministry said another Turk was wounded in Sunday’s raid on a restaurant in Burkina Faso’s capital, which killed at least 17 people.

The gunmen attacked the Aziz Istanbul restaurant in central Ouagadougou late on Sunday.

Burkina Faso security forces killed three of the suspected jihadist attackers, but there are still people trapped inside the building, Communications Minister Remi Dandjinou said.

 

 

NAN reports that Burkina Faso, like other countries in West Africa, has been targeted sporadically by jihadist groups operating across Africa’s Sahel.

Most attacks have been along its remote northern border region with Mali, which has seen attacks by Islamist militants for more than a decade.

Thirty people were killed when gunmen attacked a restaurant and hotel in Ouagadougou in January 2016 in an incident claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

AQIM and related jihadi groups were largely confined to the Sahara desert until they hijacked a Tuareg rebellion in Mali in 2012 and swept south.

 

 

French forces intervened to prevent them taking Mali’s capital, Bamako, the following year, but they have since gradually expanded their reach, launching high-profile attacks on Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.

A new al Qaeda-linked alliance of Malian jihadist groups claimed an attack in June that killed at least five people at a luxury Mali resort popular with Western expatriates just outside Bamako.

African nations launched a new multinational military force to tackle Islamist militants in the Sahel in July, but it won’t be operational until later this year and faces a budget shortfall.(Reuters/NAN)

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