Troops deploy in Ouagadougou after fresh firefights

Soldiers were stationed on the main axis of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou on Saturday morning, shortly after gunfire was heard in the city center, local media reported.

The renewed tension comes a day after a coup in which Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandoko Damiba, who came to power on January 24, was ousted as head of the transition.

Several witnesses told media in Ouagadougou that gunfire was heard around the United Nations roundabout in the city center in the morning.

The same sources say that soldiers have resumed their positions to block the main axes of the city, especially in the Ouaga 2000 district that houses the presidency, where helicopters were flying over the city center in the afternoon.

Traders who reopened their shops on Saturday morning rushed to close shop and leave the city center when calm returned, media reports said.

On Friday evening, the military announced the sacking of Colonel Damiba on national television, and his fate was unknown on Saturday morning.

In particular, what the soldiers call the “continuing deterioration of the security situation” in the country, they have decided to suspend the Constitution and the Charter of Transition, dissolve the government and the Transitional Legislative Assembly, and establish a curfew – from 9 pm to 5 am, closing the borders until further notice, suspending all political activities. placing and convening “immediately the living powers of the nation” to appoint “a new president of Paso, civilian or military.”

In a statement, the army, led by 34-year-old Captain Ibrahim Drare, head of the “Cobra” anti-jihadist special forces unit in the Gaya region (north), said Tamiba’s ambitions were “put aside. The common ideal of the Patriotic Movement for Security and Reconstruction (MPSR).

These soldiers said that Tamipa’s actions “gradually convinced us that his ambitions deviated far from our common ideal”.

“Lt-Col Tamiba’s risky choices have gradually weakened our security system and the red tape that characterizes the fallen regime has worsened during the transition, compromising strategic operations,” they said in the statement.

The second coup in less than eight months in Burkina Faso was strongly condemned by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union, the AU and the European Union.

The coup would “jeopardize months of efforts, especially on the part of ECOWAS to oversee the transition,” European diplomacy chief Joseph Borrell said in a press release.

With MAP