Seventeen dead in Ouagadougou restaurant attack

At least 17 people have been killed and eight others wounded during a terrorist attack on a restaurant in Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso.

Witnesses say that at least three of the attackers were killed by security forces, but several people remain trapped inside to the building.

"Attackers barricaded themselves in the Istanbul restaurant on Avenue Kwame Nkrumah in the centre of the city," CNN says. It was known to be popular with foreigners visiting the nation's capital.

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"There are fears that the attack is the work of one of the affiliates of al-Qaeda that are active in the Sahel region," the BBC's Alex Duval Smith reports.

However, the Guardian says "there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the violence on Sunday, which continued into the early hours of Monday with another heavy exchange of gunfire overheard by witnesses".

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