Al Qaeda in Maghreb (AQIM) have released a statement in Arabic detailing their “revenge operation” carried out by Al Murabitoon group on the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. At least 28 people died in the luxury hotel which is popular with foreign diplomats and according to the Guardian, “sometimes used sometimes used by French troops with Operation Barkhane, a force based in Chad and set up to combat Islamic militants across Africa’s vast, arid Sahel region. AQIM had released an statement earlier claiming responsibility for the attack, see following link,
“AL Qaeda claims responsibility for attack on Splendid Hotel, Burkina Faso”
An account that posted the latest statement told me,
“Three individuals are identified that carried out the attacks. They killed head of criminals belong to different nationalities. They were advised not to kill children, women or old. Peace is an international term. If they’d leave us, we’d leave them safe in their own places. Otherwise, war is ON.”
Photographs of the 3 gunmen
SITE intel group released the following tweets in relation to the AQIM statement
#AQIM identified the attackers as Ahmed al-Buqali al-Ansari, al-Battar al-Ansari, and Ahmed al-Fulani al-Ansari.
AQIM: “This blessed op comes within a series of operations to cleanse the land of Islam and Muslims from the dens of global espionage…”
AQIM: “… and in revenge for our people in Central Africa, Mali, and other lands of the Muslims, east and west”
Rukmini Callimachi, Foreign correspondent for the New York Times, (focusing on al-Qaeda and ISIS) points out in a tweet,
The statement says the team of attackers spent considerable time casing the #Splendid hotel & Cappucino Cafe, pointing to ease of access
Al-Fulani, the name ascribed to one of AQIM‘s attackers at #Splendid hotel, indicates the assailant was Peul, major ethnic group in Africa
Referring to the post, “Abdur” was keen to point out to me the following on Twitter, “we all know about looting of resources of Muslim lands in middle east… but the French government and it allies are doing same things in north Africa. still has not able to lose their interest in its past colonies. as these countries have uranium which helps nuclear reactor of France to run..
Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights/WOT and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad. She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.
Carol Anne Grayson (Radical Sister) blog 