A remote, rural Burkina Faso community has turned to Facebook to seek the release of an elderly Australian doctor kidnapped with his wife at the weekend by al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.
The dusty town of Djibo in the far north of Burkina Faso not far from Mali opened a Facebook page following the capture of “the doctor of the poor”, Dr Ken Elliot, and his wife Jocelyn, on the night of January 15-16.
The elderly couple from Perth have spent about 40 years running a 120-bed clinic, the only medical facility in the region.
A Facebook message posted on Tuesday by the people of Djibo said “the patients of the hospital of Dr Elliot, distressed at the kidnapping and in view of the duration of his detention, envisages public demonstrations.”
“We are calling upon all of the citizens and governments of the international community ... to undertake actions necessary for the liberation of Dr #Elliot,” it added.
The message came a day after hundreds of students in khaki uniforms with hand-printed cardboard placards reading “Free Elliot” turned out in the town with their teachers.
“Our small voices are crying our pain along with the dozens of sick people I've seen leaving the clinic these last three days,” said a post by Adama Dicko.
“I'm sure you've already looked after a relative of the people who kidnapped you,” he added.
The page titled “Djibo backs Dr Ken Elliot”, featuring photos of the white-haired and bearded doctor at work in the clinic, already has 4 200 followers, with messages largely from the medic's Burkinabe friends but also from his family and other Australians.
A former Australian hostage who spent 15 months in Somalia, Nigel Brennan, had a message of hope. “Something like 96 percent of people come out alive,” he said. “Very few people die in captivity.”
The whereabouts of the West Australian couple in their 80s who moved to Burkina Faso in 1972 remain unknown.
The Burkina government has said the pair were kidnapped in Baraboule, near the west African country's borders with Niger and Mali.
News of the kidnapping came at the weekend as a jihadist assault on an upmarket hotel in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou left at least 30 people dead, including many foreigners.
A spokesman for Malian militant group Ansar Dine, Hamadou Ag Khallini, told AFP in a brief phone message that the couple were being held by jihadists from the al-Qaeda-linked “Emirate of the Sahara”.
He said they were alive and more details would be released soon.
The Emirate of the Sahara is a branch of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) operating in northern Mali, according to experts. The group has claimed the attack on the Ouagadougou hotel.
AFP