What you need to know about Burkina Faso hotel attack

-- Major terrorist attacks in Africa in 2015 and new trends

Terror attacks continued unabated in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015, and regional militant groups are showing a tendency to connect to outside terror groups and change tactics.

On Friday, Al Shabaab fighters attacked an African Union (AU) Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), killing dozens of Kenyan soldiers. The group said it had taken over the military base and killed more than 63 Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldiers. However, those claims have not been verified.

The Al-Qaida-linked group has engaged AU peacekeepers and the Somali government in near daily attacks especially in Mogadishu and regions bordering Kenya.

The group has lost key towns in the south and central Somalia in the past three years, but still carries out deadly bomb attacks in the main towns including the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Another militant group operating in Africa is Boko Haram. Following its allegiance to the IS in March, Boko Haram's tactics in carrying out attacks changed and the group is using social media to spread propaganda in its fight against Nigeria's revitalized military.

On Dec. 6, 2015, Boko Haram carried out a series suicide bomb attacks in the Lake Chad Region, leaving 19 people killed and 130 others wounded.

Throughout 2015, about 1,100 schools were destroyed by Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region. The group has been blamed for scores of attacks on schools and universities in an insurgency that has killed at least 17,000 people since 2009.

The armed group made international headlines in April 2014 when it kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from a school in Chibok, a town in Borno State. Fifty-three of the school girls escaped, but the rest remained missing.

On Nov. 20, the Jihadist Al-Murabitoun group attacked the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali, killing 27 people, including three Chinese nationals.

Al-Murabitoun is based in northern Mali, an insecure region where militant attacks have now extended farther south, including Bamako.

The group, which two years ago split from al-Qaida's North Africa branch and is led by former al-Qaida commander Moktar Belmoktar, was also responsible for a shooting attack on a restaurant popular with foreigners in Bamako on March 7, 2015, which killed five people and wounded nine others.