Following Burkina Faso’s second coup in less than nine months, Captain Ibrahim Traore was named president on Wednesday, according to an official announcement.
At the weekend, newly-emerging competitor Traore, who was heading a faction of unhappy junior officers, overthrew Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had seized power in January, sending the poor Sahel nation into fresh upheaval.
It was the most recent coup to occur in the Sahel, a region that, like Burkina Faso, is grappling with an escalating Islamist insurgency.
Traore has been appointed as ‘Head of State, Supreme Head of the Armed Forces’, according to the official statement read out on national television by spokesman for the ruling junta Captain Kiswendsida Farouk Azaria Sorgho.
Following the two-day standoff, which was resolved by community and religious leaders, Damiba fled to Togo.
A seven-year-old jihadist campaign in Burkina Faso has resulted in thousands of deaths, over two million home evacuations, and the loss of government control over more than a third of the nation.
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