Burkina Faso stops an alleged coup attempt

The military administration in charge of Burkina Faso asserts that its intelligence and security agencies stopped a coup attempt.

According to reports, Burkina Faso’s ruling military government prevented the most recent coup attempt in the region of West Africa by having its intelligence and security agencies thwart an attempt to “plunge our country into chaos.”

On Wednesday, officials announced the “proven coup attempt” and claimed it had been stopped the day before. The military administration issued a statement in which it claimed that “investigations will help unmask the instigators of this plot,” without naming any of the alleged conspirators or providing information on how the conspirators attempted to carry out their takeover.

The government said that unnamed military personnel and their allies had the “dark intention of attacking the institutions of the republic.” The event happened as reports in foreign media indicated that the armed forces of Burkina Faso were becoming more tense. Officials declared that “at this time, officers and other alleged participants in this destabilisation attempt have been arrested, and others are actively being sought.”

To show their support for the military leadership, apparently thousands of protesters marched in the capital on Tuesday. The administration in Ouagadougou bemoaned the officers who had sworn to protect their nation having “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.”

After two military coups in the space of eight months, Ouagadougou’s current administration took office a year ago. Jihadist insurgencies with terrorist linkages have destabilised Burkina Faso and other Sahel-region nations in West Africa. Military coups have ousted the governments of Gabon and Niger, Burkina Faso’s landlocked neighbour to the east, in only the last two months.