Before dawn on Friday, shots rang out around Burkina Faso’s presidential palace and the headquarters of the military junta, which itself came to power in a coup last January, witnesses told AFP.
Troops blocked several main roads in the capital Ouagadougou, AFP journalists said, and state television was cut short, broadcasting a blank screen reading: “No video signal” for several hours.
“I heard heavy detonations around 4:30 a.m. (04:30 GMT) and now the streets around my house have been cordoned off by military vehicles,” said a resident who lives near the presidential palace.
The reason for the shots was not immediately clear.
During the morning, an AFP cameraman heard more gunfire in the Ouaga 2000 neighborhood, which is home to both the presidential and military junta’s headquarters.
Soldiers patrolled the city’s main intersections, particularly Ouaga 2000, but also outside the state television center, an AFP journalist said. The video signal was restored around 0915 GMT.
In Brussels, the EU expressed “concern” about events in the Burkinabe capital.
“Military movement was observed from 04:30 this morning. The situation remains particularly confused,” said spokeswoman Nabila Massrali.
– Curb jihadists –
Violence has long rocked the landlocked West Africa country, where Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba seized power in a January coup, ousted elected leader Roch Marc Christian Kabore and vowed to contain jihadists.
As in neighboring countries, insurgents linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group have fueled the unrest.
Damiba fired his defense minister earlier this month and took on the role himself.
The mini-shuffle, the first since a caretaker government was appointed in March, saw the induction of just one new minister — Maj. Col. Silas Keita was appointed ministerial delegate for national defense and promoted to brigadier general.
Since 2015, when the insurgency spread to Burkina Faso, which has since become the epicenter of violence across the Sahel, fighting has killed thousands and displaced some two million.
Attacks have increased since the beginning of the year, despite the junta’s vow to make security its top priority.
– Bloody September –
September was particularly bloody.
On Monday, suspected jihadists attacked a convoy carrying aid to the northern city of Djibo. The government said 11 soldiers were killed and around 50 civilians were missing.
Junta chief Damiba, who has promised to restore civilian rule within two years and defeat the armed factions.
On September 5, an improvised explosive device hit a supply convoy in the north, killing 35 civilians and injuring 37.
Last June, 86 civilians died in a massacre in Seytenga near the Niger border.
More than 40 percent of Burkina Faso, a former French colony, is outside government control.
Much of the impoverished Sahel is fighting the insurgency.
Beginning in northern Mali in 2012, insurgents attacked neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger in 2015. Violence has begun to spread to the coastal states of Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin in recent years.
“The deteriorating security situation in Burkina Faso and Mali has made the north of the coastal states the new front line against armed groups operating in the Sahel,” the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank, said in an April report.
French forces supported Mali against insurgency for nearly a decade, but President Emmanuel Macron decided to withdraw after falling out with the Malian junta after two military coups since 2020.
The last French troops from Operation Barkhane left last month. Despite leaving Mali, Macron insists that Paris remains committed to the “fight against terrorism” in West Africa.
