In January, gunmen killed dozens of people in a cafe frequented by foreigners in neighbouring Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, and also attacked a hotel.Gunmen from al Qaeda's North African branch drank beer at a beachside bar before launching a shooting rampage at an Ivory Coast resort town that left at least 18 people dead, the group's third major attack in West Africa in four months.Among the dead was Henrike Grohs, 51, head of the Abidjan branch of Germany's Goethe Institute cultural body."People were yelling 'Come over here!' But he didn't know what was happening and just went down to the water. Bar staff tried to warn a deaf boy who was playing nearby.Easy TargetThe attack is a heavy blow for Ivory Coast, which has recovered from more than a decade of political turmoil and a 2011 civil war to become one of the world's fastest growing economies. Bassam is where all the expatriates and middle class from Abidjan gather on the weekends," said one longtime resident, who said he had seen no sign of recent security improvements. More gunshots were then heard. "Yes, Ivory Coast is on its feet. They shot him in the water," Eddy said.The attack raised questions about Ivory Coast's preparedness for such an attack, with some asking why such a sensitive target was left so vulnerable.President Ouattara won a landslide election victory in October, promising to attract foreign investment to the largest economy in French-speaking West Africa which is also the world's top cocoa producer.. The French government had earlier said just one of its citizens had died.

"They didn't speak French.France's President Francois Hollande said four French nationals were killed in the attack. But there were few signs that was the case in Grand Bassam ahead of Sunday's attack. Yes, on its feet to combat the cowards and protect its people.France has 3,500 troops in the region, from Senegal in the far west to Chad.

The guys who were still outside started shooting Hotel House door room number metal signage Artistic Modeling and the two seated at the table yelled 'Allahu Akbar' and flipped over the table," he told Reuters.He said the first victim was a boy who was made to kneel before he was shot..The victims included foreign citizens from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, France, Germany and Mali."AQIM has spread across the Sahara from Algeria and now operates in much of western and northern Africa.French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve will travel to Ivory Coast on Tuesday to offer logistical support and intelligence, French diplomatic sources said. It poses serious security questions for former regional colonial power France, which has thousands of citizens and troops in the region. It would be easy," he said, asking not to be named. Counter-terrorism officials have also been sent to help the investigation.

The attack raised questions about Ivory Coast's preparedness, with some asking why such a sensitive target was left so vulnerable.Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko said another 26 wounded were still receiving medical attention on Monday, as President Alassane Ouattara declared three days of mourning for the country, which has never before been hit by al Qaeda. Militants attacked another hotel in the Malian capital Bamako late last year, killing 20."We don't understand why this wasn't considered a priority for protection.Staff crouched and then fled along with customers, among them parents carrying babies or leading young children by the hand. A French military base in Abidjan, manned by around 800 soldiers, serves as a logistical hub for regional operations against Islamist militancy in the Sahel. We communicated with them in English .A man, apparently disguised as a waiter in a red waistcoat over a white dress shirt, entered with a rifle, fired at the empty bar and disappeared behind it, where the Lebanese man had been hiding.. While two remained outside, the two others entered and drank beers for around a half hour.Sunday's raid, details of which are beginning to emerge in witness and official accounts, was the furthest yet from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's (AQIM) traditional desert base, a worrying indication of the militants' growing reach. They spoke Arabic.The gunmen then moved up the beach, continuing their killing spree and entering several seaside hotels.The attack in Grand Bassam, thousands of kilometres from al Qaeda's traditional operational zones, raises fears over where they might strike next.

The first police officers arrived on the scene around 15 minutes after the shooting began, witnesses said.Fifteen civilians and three members of the special forces were killed and 33 people were wounded in the attack in Grand Bassam, a weekend retreat popular with Ivorians and westerners about 40 km (25 miles) east of the commercial capital Abidjan."Ivory Coast will not let itself be intimidated by terrorists," Ouattara said in a televised address late on Monday.Witness Christian Eddy said four men arrived in a Ford saloon car at the beachside bar where he works around noon on Sunday.Three militants also died in the attack on the resort town, a UNESCO heritage site of crumbling colonial-era buildings."Attacking Bassam was the easiest thing for them to do.Surveillance footage from Hotel Etoile du Sud - one of the attackers' first targets where two people including a German woman and a Lebanese man were gunned down - showed the initial panic in the hotel bar as the first shots rang out. It would be another half hour before special units from the security forces arrived from Abidjan.The recent attacks in the region are generally viewed as targeting France and its allies after Paris intervened militarily in Mali in 2013 to drive out al Qaeda-linked militants who had seized the desert north a year earlier.They then launched the attack.While some 18,000 French citizens live in Ivory Coast, over 20,000 reside in Senegal..Since those attacks, Ivorian authorities have increased security around hotels and shopping malls in Abidjan, a city of around five million inhabitants