Suspected Islamist gunmen launched a coordinated attack on the capital of Burkina Faso on Friday, with gunshots and explosions reverberating from a downtown district housing the government offices, embassies and the military headquarters.
Burkina Faso’s police chief and state television said shortly before midday that what he said were Islamic extremists had attacked the capital Ouagadougou and that specialized units from the security forces were responding. Pictures from the scene showed a cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky.
“An armed attack is ongoing...around the office of the prime minister and at the United Nations,” the national police service said. It wasn’t immediately clear if there were any casualties.
The incident comes at the end of a tumultuous week for the landlocked, west African former French colony of 19 million. Burkina Faso endured a failed military coup in 2015 and the trial of dozens of alleged perpetrators began earlier this week but was suspended after defense lawyers walked out in protest against the military court.
While it wasn’t clear who was behind Friday’s attack, French officials labeled the assault a “terrorist attack.” The U.S. Embassy advised citizens to seek shelter.
Jean-Marc Chataigner, France’s special envoy to the Sahel region of Africa that comprises Burkina Faso, said on his Twitter feed that a “terrorist attack” was under way and expressed “solidarity to my colleagues” in the area. Xavier Lapdecab, France’s ambassador to Burkina Faso, tweeted that French nationals exercise “absolute prudence.”
An aide to French President Emmanuel Macron said the leader was closely monitoring the situation, adding that French nationals in Ouagadougou should follow instructions from the embassy.
France retains close links with the Burkina Faso and French special forces are based in Ouagadougou as part of Operation Barkhane, a 3,000-strong counterterrorism force spread across the Sahel region to tackle the growing jihadist threat.
Last year, a spree of attacks in Ouagadougou by al Qaeda extremists left some 30 people from 18 nations dead as a sprawling Islamist conflict in West Africa spilled into one of the world’s poorest countries.
That attack marked the first carried out by al Qaeda’s Saharan faction, known as AQIM, in the country. In neighboring Mali, al Qaeda’s regional franchise has orchestrated many attacks on peacekeepers, army posts and hotels popular with Western visitors. It has kidnapped dozens of European and Canadian tourists, aid workers and diplomats, most of them released for ransom.
—Stacy Meichtry in Paris contributed to this article.
Write to Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@wsj.com
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