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Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Oct. 1 (AP) Angry protesters stormed the French embassy in Burkina Faso’s capital Saturday after the West African country’s new coup leader Supporters of France have accused France of harboring the ousted interim president, an accusation strongly denied by French authorities.
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Henry Sandogo Damiba was overthrown on Friday night just nine months after a coup d’etat in Burkina Faso, which has failed to effectively deal with increasing violence by Islamic extremists . Earlier Saturday, comments by a new junta spokesman sparked outrage in the capital Ouagadougou.
Videos on social media showed residents lighting flashlights outside the French embassy.
Damiba’s whereabouts are unknown, but the French foreign ministry issued a strongly worded statement: “We officially deny involvement in the events in Burkina Faso. The French army camp has never hosted Paul Henri Sandogo Damiba. , and we don’t have our embassy.”
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Captain Ibrahim Traore, who was named in charge after state television announced the coup on Friday night, said in the first interview that he and his men were not trying to harm Damiba.
“If we wanted to, we’d take him within five minutes of the fight, maybe he would die, President. But we don’t want that kind of catastrophe,” Traore told VOA. “We don’t want to hurt him because we don’t have any personal issues with him. We are fighting for Burkina Faso.”
Roads in Ouagadougou remained blocked and a helicopter could be heard flying overhead. An internal EU security analysis seen by The Associated Press said there had been “unusual military operations” in the city.
The ouster of Dameba, who himself ousted the country’s elected president in January, has been widely condemned by the international community as uncertainty prevails. The African Union and the West African regional group known as ECOWAS have harshly criticized the development.
“At a time when progress is being made, ECOWAS considers this new power grab to be inappropriate,” the group said, citing Dameba’s recent agreement to restore constitutional order by July 2024.
After taking power in January, Damiba pledged to end the Islamist extremist violence that has forced 2 million people to flee their homes in Burkina Faso. But the group of officers, led by Traore, said Friday that Damiba had failed and was being removed.
The new junta leadership said it would bring “a renewed focus on security and the restoration of our territorial integrity by all fighting forces”.
But it remains to be seen whether the junta can reverse the crisis. There were already growing fears on Saturday that the recent political unrest will further distract the military and allow jihadists to tighten their grip on the once peaceful country.
For some in Burkina Faso’s military, Damiba is seen as too close to former colonizer France, which maintains a military presence in Africa’s Sahel region to help countries fight Islamic extremists. Some supporters of the new coup leader Traore have called on the Burkina Faso government to seek Russian support.
In neighboring Mali, the coup leader invited Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group to assist with security, a move that has drawn global condemnation and accusations of human rights abuses.
Mali also saw a second coup d’état nine months after the president was overthrown in August 2020, when the leader of the military junta sidelined his civilian transition opponents and left himself alone.
Chrysogone Zougmore, president of Burkina Faso’s Human Rights Movement, called the recent overthrow “very regrettable”, saying political instability would not help combat Islamist extremist violence.
“If the latter is characterized by such a severe division, how can we hope to unite the people and the army?” Zugmore said. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, the body of the content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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