A coup attempt against Burkina Faso’s military rulers has been thwarted by the country’s intelligence and security services, authorities said.
Burkina Faso’s military rulers said in a statement on Wednesday that army officers and others had planned to seize power and plunge the country into “chaos”.
A spokesman for the ruling military, Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, said in a statement that officers and other alleged actors involved in this attempt at destabilization have been arrested and others are actively sought, without providing details.
The latest coup attempt occurred on Tuesday, according to the statement.
The military government said it would seek to shed “all possible light on this plot” and that it regretted “that officers whose oath is to defend their homeland have strayed into an undertaking of this nature”.
The country’s military prosecutor later said that four people had been arrested and two were on the run.
Earlier this month, the military prosecutor said three soldiers had been arrested and charged with plotting against the ruling military government of Captain Ibrahim Traore, who seized power in September 2022, eight months after an earlier military coup had overthrown the democratically elected President Roch Marc Kabore.
Burkina Faso’s capital city, Ouagadougou, appeared calm on Wednesday evening following the military’s announcement of an attempt to topple it.
Thousands of pro-military government demonstrators took to the streets of Ouagadougou and elsewhere to show their support for the country’s military rulers following a call from Traore supporters to “defend” him amid rumors of a mutiny circulated on social media.
One of a growing number of West African countries where the military has seized power, army officers in Burkina Faso have taken control amid public discontent as armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) have launched a rebellion that has destabilized the country and its neighbors in West Africa’s Sahel region.
More than two million people have been uprooted by the fighting in Burkina Faso, making it one of the worst internal displacement crises in Africa.
Last week, authorities claimed nearly 192,000 internally displaced people had returned to their homes after various regions were retaken by government forces, though rebel attacks continue unabated despite claims of the military winning back territory.