Six Canadians among 29 killed in jihadist attack on Burkina hotel

At least 29 people, including six Canadians, were killed in an attack on a top hotel in the capital of Burkina Faso, the latest country to be drawn into a regional jihadist battle against the West and its allies.

Interior Minister Simon Compaore said 176 people had been rescued after security forces retook the four-star Splendid hotel and nearby Cappuccino restaurant on Saturday, more than 12 hours after the attack began. Around 30 people were wounded, he added.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says six Canadian citizens were among those killed.

“Canada strongly condemns the deadly terrorist attacks that took place in Ouagadougou,” Trudeau said in a press release.

France and Switzerland confirmed that two citizens from each country were also among the dead — all four of them killed at the restaurant — as Burkina Faso announced three days of national mourning.

“The Burkinabe nation is in shock,” President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who took office just last month, said in a radio and television address.

“For the first time in its history, our country has fallen victim to a series of barbaric terrorist attacks,” he said. But he added that the people of Burkina would “always emerge victorious”.

Compaore said the bodies of three “very young” jihadists had been identified, all of them men.

A security source said earlier that at least four attackers had been killed, two of them women.