Burkina Faso soldiers enter presidential guard camp – army officer

Burkina Faso’s army appeared to have prepared for the offensive all day, earlier surrounding the barracks, and the nearby presidential palace and national radio in the capital, Ouagadougou.

Speaking to the BBC, Gen Diendere called on his men to lay down their weapons but said that a few members of the presidential guard unit were now acting on their own. She pledged the AU’s support to see Burkina Faso through the transition process.

The coup lasted every week and the federal government was restored final Wednesday, formally disbanding the presidential guard throughout its first submit-coup cupboard assembly.

Diendere, Compaore’s former chief of staff, told AFP he was ready to face justice, saying he was “at the disposal of my country’s judiciary”.

Journalist Emilie Iob, reporting for VOA in Ouagadougou, says she witnessed soldiers erecting barricades Tuesday on several streets leading to the camp, and turning cars and pedestrians away.

Chief of Staff General Pingrenoma Zagre said late Tuesday that the camp was largely empty at the time of the assault.

“They are terrorists. We don’t want to hear about the RSP any more”.

The military junta in Burkina Faso that took power in a coup has freed interim President Michel Kafando and two of his ministers from detention, the junta’s leader said on Friday, as security forces fired in the air to quell protests. The whereabouts of General Gilbert Diendere who led the coup is not known but its believed he had earlier urged the guard to surrender.

The government had accused Diendere of seeking to mobilise “foreign troops and jihadists” to help him.

Under a peace deal brokered last week, members of the elite unit are supposed to disarm.

He is one of 14 people whose assets were frozen by the courts on Saturday, among them Diendere.

The presidential guard “agreed with disarmament, but there were no security measures for them or their families from the transitional government nor the military hierarchy”, he said.

Ouagadougou’s worldwide airport was closed on Tuesday.