W Africa vows to ‘fight’ militants

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) yesterday named three gunmen behind a deadly attack on a luxury Burkina Faso hotel that has highlighted the growing reach of militant groups in west Africa, as French police joined in the probe.
Burkinabe troops fanned out across the capital, Ouagadougou, with security stepped up at key sites as visiting Benin President Thomas Boni Yayi pledged that west African nations would fight back against a mounting terrorist threat.
“We’re not going to just sit on our hands. We will react and respond,” he said, speaking on behalf of the 15 regional nations.
“The question is whose turn is it next,” Boni Yayi added. “The terrorists who think they can take our youngsters away from us are wrong.”
Friday’s attack by Islamist gunmen on a four-star Ouagadougou hotel and nearby cafe left at least 29 people dead, around half of them foreigners.
The first such incident in the country, it came weeks after Islamists claimed an assault on a top hotel in Bamako, capital of neighbouring Mali, where 20 people died.
At the crime scene, an 18-strong team of French investigators, including forensic experts, joined local police in white coats combing for clues at the Splendid hotel and Capuccino cafe stormed by the gunmen.
At least 14 or 15 foreigners, including a nine-year-old, and seven or eight Burkinabes were among the dead, according to differing tolls given by the government and the public prosecutor. Seven bodies have not yet been identified.
The French foreign ministry said 30 people had been killed and 20 identified.
In a statement carried by US-based monitoring group SITE, AQIM said the Splendid Hotel was “one of the most dangerous dens of global espionage in the west of the African continent.”
It published photos of the three young gunmen dressed in military fatigues and wielding weapons, identifying them as Battar al-Ansari, Abu Mohamed al-Buqali al-Ansari and Ahmed al-Fulani al-Ansari.
The operation, claimed by AQIM on Saturday morning while the attack was still ongoing, was a “drop in the sea of global jihad,” the statement said.
In their earlier statement, AQIM said the gunmen were from the Al-Murabitoun group of notorious Algerian extremist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.
Authorities in Burkina Faso have said that the bodies of three assailants had been identified, but several witnesses said they saw more than three attackers and a manhunt is still under way for accomplices.
Burkina Faso has declared three days of national mourning following the onslaught.
“People are afraid. Anyone who’s not afraid isn’t normal - this is guys with guns,” said Souleymane Ouedraogo, who lives near the scene of the violence.
Until recently Burkina Faso had largely escaped the tide of Islamist violence spreading in the restive Sahel region and the hotel assault will heighten fears that militant groups are casting their net wider in search of targets in west Africa.
President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who took office just last month, said west African states needed to work together.
“We need to share information and military means,” he said. “This is an asymmetrical war and we need to train our army for this new type of combat.”

4 dead in Cameroon mosque bombing
Four worshippers were killed yesterday in a suicide bombing at a mosque in northern Cameroon, a security source said, five days after a similar attack left 12 people dead.
Yesterday’s blast hit the village of Nguetchewe in Cameroon’s Far North region, in an area near the border with Nigeria regularly targeted by Boko Haram militants.
“The toll of this attack is four dead and two injured,” the source, who was at the scene of the attack, told AFP.
A source close to regional authorities confirmed that a deadly attack had taken place in Nguetchewe, but was unable to provide details.
The security source said the attack took place around 6am (0500 GMT) just as morning prayers were ending.
“The suicide bomber, a young boy, arrived in the village by foot,” the source said, adding that a witness had noticed his behaviour seemed suspicious and had tried to intercept him.
“The bomber ran towards the mosque, where he set off the explosives he was carrying with him.”
Cameroonian troops are at the scene of the attack, the source said.
It is the second deadly blast to hit the Far North in less than a week, following a bombing at a mosque in Kolofata district during morning prayers last Wednesday.
Cameroon boosted its military presence along the Nigerian border in 2013, under increasing pressure from the militants on the other side of the border.
Boko Haram, which has waged a six-year campaign for a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, has been using the Far North as a base for supplying weapons, vehicles and equipment.
Along with Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Benin, Cameroon is part of a regional military force fighting the militants, who have killed at least 17,000 people and made more than 2.6mn others homeless.