Almost a year after Captain Ibrahim Traoré came to power in Burkina Faso through a coup d’état, the transitional government claimed, Wednesday evening, September 27, to have foiled a putsch attempt the day before. In a press release read on national television, the government “informs public opinion that a proven coup attempt was foiled on September 26, 2023 by the Burkinabé intelligence and security services.”
“At present, officers and other alleged actors involved in this attempt at destabilization have been arrested and others actively sought,” continues the government, which deplores that the authors of this attempted putsch “fed the dark design to attack the institutions of the Republic and to throw [the] country into chaos.”
Tuesday evening, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Ouagadougou to call for support for Captain Traoré to “defend” him in the face of rumors of a putsch that were stirring social networks.
“Officers” have “gone astray.”
Assuring that it wants to shed “all light on this plot”, the government “regrets that officers whose oath is to defend the Homeland have erred in an enterprise of such a nature which aims to hinder the march of the Burkinabe people for their sovereignty and its total liberation from the terrorist hordes that attempt to enslave it.”
This alleged putsch attempt comes almost a year to the day after Captain Traoré took power in a coup on September 30, 2022. It was then the second coup in eight months that Burkina Faso experienced. Faso, undermined for almost ten years by bloody jihadist violence over a large part of its territory.
The ruling junta announced on Monday the suspension of “all broadcast media” of the French media Jeune Afrique (paper newspaper, website) after the publication of articles evoking tensions within the Burkinabe army.
