BURKINA FASO'S MILITARY GOVERNMENT SAYS IT FOILED ANOTHER COUP ATTEMPT
The Junta in Burkina Faso which toppled a military regime to gain power, on Wednesday said it foiled a coup attempt.
In a statement read out on state television, it said "a proven coup attempt was foiled on September 26, 2023, by Burkina Faso's intelligence and security services.
"At present, officers and other alleged participants in this destabilization attempt have been arrested and others are being actively sought," the statement said.
It said the alleged perpetrators "had the sinister intention of attacking the institutions of the Republic and plunging the country into chaos."
Junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power on September 30, 2022, the second coup in eight months.
The two takeovers were each triggered in part by discontent at failures to stem a raging jihadist insurgency which swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015.
Late on Tuesday thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Ouagadougou, following a call from Traore supporters to defend him amid rumors of a coup on social media.
The military government said it would seek to shed "all possible light on this plot."
It said it "regrets that officers whose oath is to defend their homeland have 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."
The country's military prosecutor, earlier this month said three soldiers had been arrested and charged with plotting against the ruling junta.
Investigators had received a tipoff about "soldiers and former soldiers working in intelligence" who were scouting out the homes and other locations used by key figures in the junta, including Traore.
Their goal was to "destabilize the transition," it said, referring to a term used to describe interim military rule before promised elections.
Shortly after Traore's takeover, military prosecutors in December 2022 also said there had been an attempt to "destabilize state institutions."
Those behind it, they said, were civilians and a lieutenant colonel named Emmanuel Zoungrana.
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