Burkina Faso
Six of the 29 people killed by Islamist militants in Burkina Faso on
Friday were on a humanitarian trip prompted by their Christian faith,
while a seventh was a US missionary who, with his wife, had been running
an orphanage and women’s refuge in the West African country since 2011.
The dead included four Canadians from the same family who had gone there over their Christmas break to do aid work in schools and orphanages.
Yves Carrier, his wife Gladys Chamberland and their two children,
Charles-Élie, 19, and Maude, 37, were visiting on behalf of their local
church-affiliated group, Le Centre Amitié de Solidarité Internationale
de la Région des Appalaches. They and two family friends, Suzanne
Bernier and Louis Chabot, left Quebec just before Christmas to live and
work in several remote villages in Burkina Faso.
The group were on a three-week visit and were in the capital,
Ouagadougou. Charles-Elie and Maude had been due to fly home that
evening, and the group had gone out for a last meal in the capital
before the two packed to go to the airport. They were supporting the
Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help; Gladys
Chamberland had already had a short trip to Africa in 2013.
Chamberland’s sister, Marie-Claude Blais, wrote on Facebook: “I still
can’t understand how people who had such a love of life, who were always
ready to help, always smiling and loved by so many people, can be taken
away in such a horrendous way. They did good only to be killed by
evil.”
Meanwhile, victim Michael Riddering, 45, from Florida had been working
as a Christian missionary in Burkina Faso since 2011, according to his
blog, Reach Burkina. During the recent Ebola crisis, his work had included comforting families and digging graves.
On Friday 15 January, he was meeting a local pastor, named as Valentin,
at Cappuccino, the café where the attack began. The pastor was able to
make a quick call to Riddering’s wife, Amy, to say “Pray”, before the
line went dead. His wife took to Facebook to try to find out what had
happened to her husband and their friend. She later confirmed on the
social media site that her husband had died during the attack, saying:
“Heaven has gained a warrior!”
Pastor Valentin is reported to have survived after he hid for hours in the café, and was said to have been rescued by the Army.
The American couple had two adult daughters, Hayley and Delaney, in the
US but had adopted two more from Burkina Faso – a girl, Biba, 15, and a
boy, Moise, aged four.
Michael Riddering was later due to collect a visiting volunteer group
from a church in Florida. Their plane was at first diverted, but they
eventually landed in Ouagadougou, only to have to make plans to return
home.
Riddering’s mother-in-law, Carol Boyle, described him as a man who was
“extremely well-loved and respected ... He had his guiding light, and he
followed it”.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said the jihadist group
al-Murabitoun was behind the attacks on two hotels and the café, which
were frequented by UN staff and aid workers. Burkina Faso’s president,
Roch Marc Christian Kabore, said two of the attackers had been
identified as women. Three jihadis, including an Arab and two Africans,
were killed in the assault on the Splendid Hotel and nearby Cappuccino
Café, officials said. A fourth extremist was killed at the Yibi Hotel,
which was searched by troops as part of a later raid on nearby
buildings.
In a statement
released online, the group said that the attack was “a new message from
the heroic champions of Islam, with their blood and their bodies, to
the slaves of the cross, the occupiers of our homes, the looters of our
wealth, and who would undermine our security”.
AQIM and al-Murabitoun said they were jointly behind the attack on a hotel in Mali in November, where 22 people were killed.
AQIM is based in the Sahara Desert between Mali, Niger and Algeria and
has attacked West African countries, but this is the first time the
group has targeted Burkina Faso.
Explaining the reasons behind the attack, The Guardian
said it is a message to France and its Operation Barkhane – a
3,000-strong military force spanning five countries, intended to combat
Islamist militancy – that the intervention is not working.
On the same day as the attack, an Australian doctor and his wife were kidnapped
in Ouagadougou. Ken and Jocelyn Elliot, a Christian couple in their
eighties, have been setting up medical facilities in Burkina Faso since
the 1970s. They were running a 120-bed clinic in the town of Djibo,
close to Mali’s border, where Dr Elliot is the only surgeon.
A social media campaign
has been set up by Djibo residents to help find them. The Facebook
group, which already has more than 3,000 likes, describes the impact the
Elliots have had on the town: “Support Dr. Elliot, ‘The doctor of the
poor’, and his wife, helping people for over 40 years in Djibo, Burkina
Faso, last kidnapped by AQIM.”
Hamadou Ag Khallini, a spokesperson for Malian militant group Ansar
Dine, told Australian media that the al-Qaeda-linked Emirate of the
Sahara group was holding the couple. There has been no official
statement saying where the couple are being held or why they were
kidnapped.
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