BULLET casings should not be strewn across city blocks. Yet in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, hundreds were on Saturday morning. Small or large, thin or long, copper or silver-coloured, they covered the intersection one street away from the Splendid Hotel, which had come under attack for more than 12 hours on Friday night. The assault left at least 28 people dead and another 56 injured.
The smoke cleared on the morning after the atrocity to reveal the blackened entrance to the hotel, a ruined café across the street and burned-out shells of cars and motorcycles in between. Three assailants have been identified among the dead, though some witnesses claim there were as many as five attackers, including two women. They arrived heavily armed and, according to witnesses, often fired twice into victims to ensure that they were dead. This appears to have been a well planned assault. Some witnesses say they saw the attackers, dressed in black coats or sitting in nearby cars, surveilling their target for several hours before the shooting started. They were all young.
Europe, America and Africa are familiar with the deadly formula of terror used in this attack. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which claimed responsibility, was behind a similar assault on a hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali, last month. In Ouagadougou, as in Bamako, the victims were a cosmopolitan collection from many countries.
This attack is a setback for French anti-terror operations in west Africa. January marks the start of the fourth year that French special forces have been pursuing and attacking jihadist terror groups across five countries in the region. Yet despite this long operation, groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb seem able to mount new attacks that are planned and conducted across borders. The incident also marks a new chapter for Burkina Faso: although it has suffered considerable political turmoil, including a coup and uprising in the past two years, this was its first jihadist attack.
The chief security officer of the hotel had been worried about just such an eventuality. When Bamako suffered a similar hotel attack in November he ordered his security staff to tighten up. But there wasn’t time. When he received a call that the entrance was under attack at 19:18 on Friday night, he grabbed his pistol and an extra-large clip. Yet the attackers had come in force and quickly gained the upper hand—the shell cases strewn across the streets a testament to their ferocity.