At least 17 people were killed and eight wounded in a provisional toll from an attack on a restaurant in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, overnight, Communications Minister Remi Dandjinou told a news conference on Monday.

Gunmen attacked a restaurant in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou on Sunday and gunfire could be heard as security forces deployed to the scene, a Reuters witness said. The witness saw customers running out of the Aziz Istanbul restaurant as police and paramilitary gendarmerie surrounded it.

Burkina Faso, like other countries in West Africa, has been sporadically targeted by jihadist groups operating across Africa's Sahel. Most attacks have been along its remote northern border region with Mali, a country which has seen attacks by Islamist militants for more than a decade.

Thirty people were killed when gunmen struck a restaurant and hotel in Ouagadougou in January 2016 in an incident claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. A new al-Qaeda-linked alliance of Malian jihadist groups claimed an attack that killed at least five people at a Mali luxury resort popular with Western expatriates just outside the capital Bamako in June this year.

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