At least eight people were killed and more than 80 injured in two attacks in Burkina Faso’s capital, one of them targeting the French embassy, security officials said.<\/p>\n
Those killed were all security personnel, Security Minister Clement Sawadogo said during a Friday news conference in Ouagadougou.
\nThe injured were being treated at local civilian and military hospitals, he said, adding that dozens were in “quite serious conditions” and three were “considered very serious.”
\nSawadogo confirmed there were two coordinated attacks: one against the French embassy, the other against the national army headquarters, and said assailants used a “vehicle packed with explosives” against the latter.
\nPrime Minister Paul Kaba Thi\u00e9ba on Saturday visited both attack sites, according to local media reports.
\nR\u00e9mi Dandjinou, Burkina Faso’s minister of communication, told CNN on Friday that six attackers had been “neutralized” across the two sites.
\nThere has been no claim of responsibility for the attacks.
\nSpeaking in Paris, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France was targeted because it is “Burkina Faso’s ally in its fight against terrorism.”
\nThe UN Security Council issued a statement condemning “in the strongest terms the barbaric and cowardly terrorist attacks” in Ouagadougou.
\nIts members “expressed their solidarity with Burkina Faso in its fight against terrorism and stressed the need to intensify regional and international efforts to combat terrorism and violent extremism, which may be conducive to terrorism.”<\/p>\n
This is the third major assault on Ouagadougou in the past two years. Previous attacks were carried out by al Qaeda allies in the region.
\nAn attack by gunmen last year on a restaurant in the capital left at least 18 people dead, including two attackers. The victims were of several different nationalities.
\nA similar assault in 2016 on a cafe and hotel popular with Western diplomats in the same district of the city left 29 dead.
\nThe West, particularly France, considers Burkina Faso a key ally in the fight against al Qaeda in the region.
\nFrance has a military presence in Burkina Faso as part of Operation Barkhane, which was launched in 2014 to combat jihadist activity across the Sahel region.
\nThe country was formerly known as the Republic of Upper Volta when it was established in 1958 as a self-governing colony under France. It gained full independence in 1960.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least eight people were killed and more than 80 injured in two attacks in Burkina Faso’s capital, one of them targeting the French embassy, security officials said. Those killed were all security personnel, Security Minister Clement Sawadogo said during a Friday news conference in Ouagadougou. The injured were being treated at local civilian and military hospitals, he said, adding… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1451,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions\/1451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}