Army forces drive near Hotel Splendid where the attackers remain with sporadic gunfire continuing in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou on January 15, 2016 © Ahmed Ouoba / AFP
On 16th January 2016, Ouagadougou of Burkina Faso is under attack by several masked gunmen. This ongoing attack by the armed militia killed more than 20 people.
According to the news report, gunmen stormed the Splendid hotel in Ouagadougou, took hostages and detonated car bomb outside the hotel.
Burkina Faso’s communications minister Remis Dandjinou tweeted that the military had rescued some 63 hostages from the hotel. But total number of death was not known yet.
Locals are reporting that they are hearing heavy gunfire from the top floors of the hotel.
On the other hand Burkina Faso’s Intererior Minister Simon Compaore told to the reporters that 10 dead bodies were found in the Cappuccino café close to the hotel which was being frequently visited by the westerners.
But the SITE monitoring group claimed that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was behind the attack. SITE said the gunmen were loyal to Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar who fought in Afghanistan against the soviet forces in 1980s. There were reports that Belmokhtar and his fighters joined AQIM last year.
Since the declaration of One Belt One Road project by china to connect Asia, Africa and Europe, the situation of Middle East and Africa are further deteriorating into civil wars. There are speculations that, the recent Al-Shabaab, AQIM and Boko-Haram insurgency in Africa was redesigned by the west to contain Chinese geopolitical activities in the African region.
