Security forces in Burkina Faso retook a hotel in the capital yesterday from Al Qaeda fighters who seized it in an assault that killed two dozen people from at least 18 countries and marked a major escalation of Islamist militancy in West Africa. 
Until Friday night’s attack, the landlocked nation, an ally of Western governments against jihadist groups in the arid reaches of the southern Sahara, had largely been spared the violence that has plagued its neighbours. 
The assault follows a similar raid in November on a luxury hotel in Mali’s capital Bamako which killed 20 people, including citizens of Russia, China and the US. 
The Ouagadougou assault, claimed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), marked an expansion of operations for Islamist militants who are stepping up their activities, echoing the growth of Islamic State in the Middle East. 
President Roch Marc Kabore said 23 people of 18 different nationalities were killed in the 146-room Splendid Hotel and a nearby Cappuccino restaurant popular with Westerners and French soldiers based in Burkina Faso. The authorities gave no further details of the victims. 
One Cappuccino survivor said diners at first mistook the gunfire and explosions for firecrackers before two gunmen, dressed all in black and brandishing AK-47 assault rifles, burst in at around 8.30pm (2030 GMT) on Friday, firing indiscriminately. 
“We heard shots, grenades, detonations. It was echoing and extremely loud. It went on for a long time,” the survivor, a Slovenian social anthropologist told Reuters. “They kept coming back and forth into Cappuccino. You’d think it was over, then they’d come back and shoot more people. They would come back and see if the white people were moving and then they would shoot them again.”
“The situation we’re experiencing since yesterday in Burkina Faso is unprecedented,” Kabore said when he visited the scene of the attack. “These are vile, cowardly acts and the victims are innocent people.” 
French ambassador Gilles Thibault put the death toll at 27 and said on Twitter that around 150 hostages had been freed in an operation that received support from French and US forces. 
Burkinabe authorities said that around 33 people had been injured and that four assailants, including an “Arab” and two “black Africans”, were killed. 
Another survivor, a French architect called Ludovic who was at an outdoor bar near Cappuccino when the attacks started, said he saw three assailants singling out white victims before running into the Splendid hotel. 
Separately, an Austrian doctor and his wife were kidnapped overnight in the Baraboule area in the north, the security ministry said. It was not clear if there was a link to the hotel attack. 
The couple had been taken near the town of Djibo close to the country’s border with Mali. The doctor had been running a hospital in the region for years, according to officials.
The foreign ministry in Vienna said it had appointed a crisis management group to deal with the incident.
The attackers torched cars and fired in the air to drive people back before entering the Splendid Hotel and taking hostages. 
French and US military personnel backed up Burkina Faso security forces when they launched their operation to reclaim the Splendid Hotel before dawn yesterday, though their progress through the building was slowed by explosives planted by the militants. 
France normally has up to 200 special forces troops in the country as part of a regional anti-militant operation. 
A Reuters witness said major clashes ended after a period of sustained gunfire and explosions that appeared to focus on the Cappuccino restaurant early yesterday. 
Sporadic gunfire continued through the morning however. The final assailant was killed later in another nearby hotel, the Hotel Yibi, officials said.