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Kafando on Friday signed a decree to disband the presidential guard.

Members of the unit stormed the cabinet room on 16 September, seizing the interim president, the prime minister and others. Armored vehicles surrounded the building.

Senegal’s president Macky Sall, the current chairman of West Africa’s regional bloc ECOWAS who is leading the mediation efforts, later left the hotel.

In media interviews, he said he had no contact with Mr Compaore and would do everything to “avoid violence that could plunge the country into chaos”.

Burkina Faso’s interim President Michel Kafando has been freed and is in good health, the new junta leaders say.

“We ask them to lay down their arms and go the Sangoule Lamizana camp where they and their families will be safe”, it said, referring to a military barrack west of the capital.

The military in Burkina Faso has taken to the airwaves to declare it now controls the country, confirming that a coup has taken place just weeks before national elections.

He said that the Presidential Guard is planning “to discuss all that with the concerned actors, notably the political parties and civil society organisations to establish a timetable that allows us to move towards presidential and parliamentary elections”.

On Wednesday, presidential guard (RSP) members burst into a cabinet meeting and detained acting president Michel Kafando, prime minister Isaac Zida, and two ministers.

African Union and local troops have seized one of the last major towns held by the al-Shabab Islamic extremist rebels in the southwest of the country, a Somali officer said Wednesday.

Chadian dictator Hissene Habre went on trial yesterday in Senegal, a quarter of a century after his blood-soaked reign came to an end, in a trial seen as a test case for African justice.