Burkina Faso’s military junta said it thwarted an attempted coup this week, the latest sign of instability in the West African nation battling an Islamist insurgency under a fragile transitional government.
(Bloomberg) — Burkina Faso’s military junta said it thwarted an attempted coup this week, the latest sign of instability in the West African nation battling an Islamist insurgency under a fragile transitional government.
A group of military officers and their allies who planned to attack state institutions and “throw our country into chaos” were arrested, a government spokesman said in a statement late Wednesday. Others, who had not yet been captured, were “actively being pursued,” Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said.
The possibility of another coup has haunted Burkina’s transitional leader Ibrahim Traore. The colonel seized power a year ago, overthrowing Interim President Henri Paul Sandaogo Damiba — himself a soldier who mounted a coup in January 2022.
Traore appointed new heads of the security services including at the National Intelligence Agency earlier this month following the arrest of several army officers accused of “plotting against the state.”
The government “reassures that all light will be shed on this attempted coup,” Ouedraogo said in the statement. Military leaders have taken power in five African countries, most recently in Niger and Gabon, in the past two years.
Read more: What’s Driving the Coups Across Sub-Saharan Africa?: QuickTake
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