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Burkina Faso: Military Rulers Thwarted Another Coup Attempt, Plotters Arrested
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Burkina Faso: Military Rulers Thwarted Another Coup Attempt, Plotters Arrested
By Zuwish Sule
In a statement read out on state television, it said “a proven coup attempt was foiled on September 26, 2023, by Burkina Faso’s intelligence and security services.
“At present, officers and other alleged participants in this destabilisation attempt have been arrested and others are being actively sought”.
It said the alleged perpetrators “had the sinister intention of attacking the institutions of the Republic and plunging the country into chaos”.
Junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré seized power on September 30, 2022, the landlocked country’s second coup in eight months.
The two takeovers were each triggered in part by discontent at failures to stem a raging jihadist insurgency which swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015.
Late on Tuesday thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Ouagadougou following a call from Traoré supporters to “defend” him amid rumours of a coup on social media. The military government said it would seek to shed “all possible light on this plot”.
It said it “regrets that officers whose oath is to defend their homeland have strayed into an undertaking of this nature, which aims to hinder the Burkinabe people’s march for sovereignty and total liberation from the terrorist hordes trying to enslave them”.
