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At the end of a confused day, a group of soldiers appeared on Friday, September 30, in front of national television cameras to announce the removal from power of the president of the transition, Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the closure of borders and suspension of institutions until further notice. The new strongman at the head of the junta is 34-year-old Captain Ibrahim Traoré. Details from Kalidou Sy, former France 24 correspondent in Burkina Faso.
Burkina Faso experienced, on Friday 30 September, a second coup in eight monthsLt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damibawho came to power in a putsch at the end of January, having in turn been dismissed from his post by the military.
After one enamelled day of shootings in the district of the presidency in Ouagadougouregarding fifteen soldiers in fatigues and for some hooded spoke, shortly before 8:00 p.m. (GMT and local) on the national radio and television set.
“Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba is removed from his position as president of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration” (MPSR, the ruling body of the junta), the soldiers said in a statement read by a captain. He added that the new strongman of the country, designated president of the MPSR, was now captain Ibrahim Traoré.
As during the January 2022 coup, the soldiers invoked “the continuous deterioration of the security situation” in the country. “We have decided to take our responsibilities, driven by a single ideal, the restoration of the security and integrity of our territory”, they declared in their televised intervention.
“Our initial common ideal has been betrayed by our leader in whom we had placed all our trust. Far from liberating the occupied territories, the once peaceful areas have come under terrorist control,” they said.
Since 2015, recurrent attacks by armed movements affiliated with the jihadists of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, mainly in the north and east of the country, have claimed thousands of lives and caused the displacement of some 2 million people. .
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