The military junta in Burkina Faso, at 8pm GMT on Wednesday 27th, confirmed on national television, that an attempted coup against against it had been foiled.
The Transitional Government informed the public that the coup attempt was foiled by the Burkinabè intelligence and security services. “At the moment, some military officers and other accomplices suspected of being involved in the attempt have been arrested and others are actively sought,” a spokesman for the ruling military Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement without providing details.
In the statement read on air, the government expressed regret 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 Government hailed the swift effort to foil the plot, saying they also “pay a vibrant tribute to all our people and particularly to our youth for their resolute and historic commitment to defending the Homeland and protecting it against all those who want to take us backwards into history.”
This is the second coup attempt the military junta has foiled in a month, and the fifth in less than a year against Capt. Ibrahim Traore, the head of the junta, according to sources in the country.
According to a Voice of America (VOA) report, earlier this month, the country’s military prosecutor said three soldiers had been arrested and charged with plotting against the ruling junta.
The VOA report quoted the military prosecutor as saying that 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 “destabilise … the transition,” it said.
Shortly after Traore’s takeover, military prosecutors in December 2022 also said there had been an attempt to “destabilise state institutions.” Those behind it, they said, were civilians and a lieutenant-colonel named Emmanuel Zoungrana.
Late on Tuesday, the night of the attempted coup, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital, Ouagadougou, and Bobo Dioulassou, the country’s second largest city, following a call from supporters of Traore to defend him amid rumours of a coup on social media. During the rampage that followed, sources say, a crowd attacked a soldier who was suspected of being one of the plotters.
