Burkina Faso to return to civilian rule after coup

Soldiers from the elite presidential guard stormed into a cabinet meeting on Wednesday and abducted President Michel Kafando and ministers, disrupting a transition period due to end with polls on October 11.

Gen. Gilbert Diendere, the leader of a military coup in Burkina Faso, has entered a final round of discussions with Senegal’s President Macky Sall.

Sall’s office said the negotiators were working on a scenario “which could very well lead to a return” of the country’s interim leader Kafando, who is under house arrest after being detained at the presidential palace by troops loyal to Compaore on Wednesday.

Compaore was toppled by a popular uprising last October after 27 years in power, leading to the installation of a transitional government.

A foreign diplomatic source in Ouagadougou on Saturday confirmed this was the solution negotiators were looking for.

Speaking on state TV and radio early Thursday before a blue background, Lieutenant Colonel Mamadou Bamba said the country’s transitional government was dissolved and the interim president was no longer in power.

In Burkina Faso it is reported that three people have died and at least 13 have been injured at the main hospital in Ouagadougou. “Diendere should leave”.

“We may hope again”, Boni Yayi said at a press conference after a third round of talks with Diendere late on Saturday.

The coup – the country’s sixth since it won independence from France in 1960 – unfolded overnight.

“We simply want a set of proposals that allow us to get to the elections in all peace and serenity while assuring that the results are uncontested and incontestable”, Diedere told TV 5 MONDE earlier in the day.

The African Union has suspended the West African country´s membership and given leaders 96 hours, or until September 22, to restore the former government. Soldiers from the regiment fired on protests after the coup was announced. Anyone who supported the ex-president’s bid to amend the constitution so he could seek another term was also banned from running.

In the capital, amid growing calls for civil disobedience, the homes of two former Compaore allies – former Ouagadougou mayor Simon Compaore, and Salif Diallo, who had joined opposition ranks in 2014 – were ransacked overnight Friday, an AFP reporter saw.

But the military has lifted a curfew and reopened land and air borders that they had closed after seizing power.