Burkina Faso’s new legislative assembly opened on Friday with a call for self-sacrifice from the 71 members appointed by the junta that came to power a month ago.

Burkina, one of the poorest countries in the world, has been fighting a jihadist offensive since 2015.

Angry army officers have staged two coups this year to show their anger at their failure to quell the insurgency.

Coup leader Ibrahim Traore appointed 20 of the new MPs and the armed forces 16. The country’s 13 regions each elected one member, civil society groups 12 and political parties 10.

A dozen members of the last parliament were among those appointed, including Abdoulaye Soma, who ran for president in 2020, and 41-year-old law professor Ousmane Bougouma, who was elected speaker on Friday.

“Our country, Burkina Faso, is going through difficult times in its history,” Bougouma told the gathering.

“It’s not a time for celebration, but for commitment and self-sacrifice.”

The gathering opened in mid-October after an agreement was reached on an interim charter to help bring the Sahel nation back to the polls.

Traore, 34, ousted Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba on September 30.

In January, Damiba led a group of officers to overthrow the last President-elect, Roch Marc Christian Kabore.

Traore has been appointed interim president with the stated aim of seizing vast tracts of land held by “terrorist hordes”.

Thousands have been killed in Burkina in the past seven years, around two million of the country’s 21 million people have fled their homes and more than a third of the country is outside government control.