See Photos:Victims of Splendid hotel attack in Burkina Faso's Ouagadougou

Attackers have killed "several people" at a restaurant in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou opposite a four-star hotel where the assailants are holed up, a restaurant staff member told AFP...


Reached by telephone, the employee of the Capuccino restaurant was unable to give an exact toll. A police officer was shot trying to reach the Splendid hotel opposite where the attackers remain, according to officers, with sporadic gunfire continuing.

The French Embassy in Burkina Faso released a statement on its website calling incident a 'terrorist attack and urged its citizens to return home and to avoide the hotel, the Cafe Capuccino and Kwame N'Krumah Avenue.


The U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou tweeted: 'We are closely following the situation downtown.'
Security forces battled suspected Islamist fighters who were holding hostages at hotel used by foreigners in Burkina Faso's capital on Friday, gendarmes and witnesses said.

The gunmen stormed the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou's business district, burning cars outside and firing in the air to drive back crowds before security forces arrived, prompting an intense exchange of gunfire.

The hotel is sometimes used by French troops with Operation Barkhane, a force based in Chad and set up to combat Islamist militants across Africa's vast, arid Sahel region.

"It is continuing at this time. We are trying to know how many attackers they are to better coordinate our actions. Hostages have been taken. The operation could take several hours," a senior official with the national gendarmes said, asking not to be named.


A Reuters witness saw gunmen emerge from the hotel and fire into the air. A vehicle carrying security personnel arrived and shortly afterwards an intense gun battle began.

The landlocked West African state has endured bouts of political turmoil since Oct. 2014 when veteran President Blaise Compaore was overthrown during mass protests.

It was not immediately known how many people may have been killed during the siege, though a survivor told hospital director Robert Sangare he estimated the toll could be as high as 20. At least 15 other people were seriously wounded by bullets and undergoing treatment at the Yalgado Ouedraogo hospital, he said.

The local al-Qaida affiliate known as AQIM claimed responsibility online as the attack was ongoing in downtown Ouagadougou at the 147-room Splendid Hotel, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
In a message posted in Arabic on the militants' "Muslim Africa" Telegram account, it said fighters had "broke into a restaurant of one of the biggest hotels in the capital of Burkina Faso, and are now entrenched and the clashes are continuing with the enemies of the religion." Fighters who spoke by phone later "asserted the fall of many dead Crusaders,"  AQIM said, according to SITE.


Witness Vital Nounagnon told the AP that he saw four men wearing turbans attack the hotel and neighboring Cappuccino Cafe about 7.30pm. Another witness who gave only his first name, Gilbert, said that when Burkinabe security forces first arrived, they turned around rather than confront the attackers.


"But we know that the gunmen won't get out of the hotel alive," he said. "Our country is not for jihadists or terrorists. They got it wrong."

A man who works the day shift at the Cappuccino Cafe, Alpha Ouedraogo, had left just 90 minutes before the attack began. He said he had been in touch by phone with other employees and that more than a dozen of them were in hiding and awaiting rescue.

Burkina Faso, a largely Muslim country, had for years been mostly spared from the violence carried out by Islamic extremist groups who were abducting foreigners for ransom in Mali and Niger. Then last April, a Romanian national was kidnapped in an attack that was the first of its kind in Burkina Faso.

The country also has been in growing political turmoil since its longtime president was ousted in a popular uprising in late 2014. Last September members of a presidential guard launched a coup that lasted only about a week. The transitional government returned to power until Burkina Faso's November election ushered in new leaders.

Friday's violence mirrored a devastating attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in neighboring Mali back in November that left 20 people dead. In that case, Malian troops – backed by French and American special forces – swarmed in to retake the building and free terrified guests and hotel staff during a siege that lasted more than seven hours.

The Bamako hotel attack also was claimed by a leader of AQIM, who said it had been carried out as a declaration of unity with Algerian militant Moktar Belmoktar's extremist group Al-Mourabitoun, according to an audio speech that was distributed by SITE at the time. Belmoktar was a former leader in AQIM before starting his own group, which now has merged back with al-Qaida.