Burkina Faso

The country’s military government claimed on Wednesday it had averted a coup. This comes almost a year after the country’s leader himself came to power in a coup. A message was read out on state television saying that an “attempted coup was thwarted on September 26 by Burkina Faso’s intelligence and security services”. “Officers and other suspected participants in this destabilization attempt have been arrested, while others are actively sought,” the statement said. The people behind the alleged coup attempt, according to the announcement, wanted “to attack the institutions of the republic and send the country into chaos”. The leader of the military junta, Ibrahim Traoré, came to power on September 30, 2022, in a coup, which was the second in the country in just eight months. The two coups were due, among other things, to dissatisfaction with the lack of success in the fight against a jihadist insurgency that had spread from neighboring Mali. Late on Tuesday, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Ouagadougou./ritzau/AFP