At least 20 people were killed and eight wounded in a provisional toll from an overnight attack the government says was a terrorist attack on a restaurant in the centre of Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou.
The shooting began shortly after 9pm local time on Sunday on Ouagadougou’s busy Kwame Nkrumah Avenue.
Details in this reports Security forces launched a counter attack about an hour after the shooting started, the gunfight extending into the early hours of Monday.
A Turkish restaurant, the Aziz Istanbul, popular with foreigners, appears to have been targeted because of the nature of its clients.
Witnesses say the attackers arrived on motorcycles and began shooting randomly at customers seated outside the restaurant.
The attack is similar to one last January, when gunmen targeted the Splendid Hotel and the Cappuccino restaurant, only 200 meters from this latest attack. 30 people were killed in that incident.
The Burkinabe government says it has contained this new attack, and its forces were carrying out house-to-house searches for likely fleeing attackers.
It is still unclear who carried out the attack but there are fears that the latest attack is the work of one of the affiliates of al-Qaeda still active in the Sahel region.
