Burkina Faso capital security tightens after jihadi attack

In the wake of a weekend attack that left up to 32 dead, security was beefed up across Burkina Faso's capital today as businesses and banks reopened.
The West African nation also announced a joint effort with Mali in the fight against jihadi elements in the West African region.
"Please go ahead and search my bag. We want to be protected and there is no way to refuse this," said Fati Doussa, who visited a bank to get some cash. Metal detectors have been placed at banks.
"We know it is just going to be different from now on," said Ousmane Sawadogo, a cell-phone seller some 200 metres (218 yards) from the Splendid Hotel.

The attack, which began Friday night, was the first of its kind in Burkina Faso, a largely Muslim country that had managed to avoid the kinds of jihadist attacks that have hit neighboring Mali since 2012.
At the site, forensic experts and investigators from France and Burkina Faso, dressed in white, filled the brown dusty street today, gathering evidence in secured areas near the Cappuccino Cafe and Splendid Hotel.

Military forces ended the siege Saturday. Officials said forces killed three attackers in the Splendid Hotel, and another in a neighbouring hotel.
But a Burkina Faso gendarme official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to speak to the press, said they are investigating the person killed at the nearby hotel to determine if it was an attacker.

Burkina Faso's security minister, Simon Compaore, yesterday said 32 people were dead, including three jihadists. The toll had earlier been 28 killed in addition to four jihadists.
Two former Olympic officials, Jean-Noel Rey from Switzerland and Jean-Pascal Kinda from Burkina Faso, were killed, Swiss and Burkina Faso authorities said. It was not clear if they had been together during the attack or if their presence was a coincidence.
Kinda, 73, was a former Olympic Committee president who had gone to the Cappuccino Cafe to pick up a paper, said his friend and a local magistrate Mathias Tankoano.
Rey was co-President of the Swiss bidding committee for the 2006 Olympics, Swiss media reports said. He was in Burkina Faso for a charity project to open the canteen of a school, the reports said.

The toll also includes a Ukrainian woman who was co-owner of the Cappuccino Cafe, along with her 9-year-old son, according to Ukrainian and Italian officials, and six Canadians, according to Canada officials. The six were travelling together as part of a humanitarian mission, and four them were from the same family.