Ouagadougou – Police in Burkina Faso fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters at an unsanctioned anti-government rally in the capital on Saturday, an AFP journalist reported.
Anti-riot police fired tear gas to prevent the demonstrators from gathering for the rally in a square in the centre of Ouagadougou, where substantial police and security forces had been deployed and all shops closed.
The crowds had wanted to demonstrate against the failure of President Roch Marc Christian Kabore to quell jihadist violence that has engulfed the country, but city authorities banned the gathering.
One of the protesters, 28-year-old Fabrice Sawadogo, said that “after seven years of failure to prevent the terrorist attacks… it is time to ask the government to go.”
The “incompetent” administration “has to admit it has failed,” he said.
ALSO READ | French military convoy in Burkina Faso remains blocked after protests
An alliance of three groups called the November 27 Coalition had called for people to take to the streets on Saturday “in a peaceful atmosphere to denounce growing insecurity and demand the departure” of Kabore.
But other civil society groups distanced themselves from the protests, refusing, they said, “to be complicit with those who want to push the country into chaos”.
Kabore has been facing mounting anger over failures to stem a jihadist insurgency that swept in from neighbouring Mali.
Groups linked to al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group have plagued the landlocked Sahel nation since 2015, killing about 2,000 people and displacing 1.4 million from their homes.
An attack on November 14 saw hundreds of fighters storm a gendarmerie camp at Inata in the north of the country, killing 53 police and four others.
It was the biggest daily loss among the security forces in the history of the insurgency.
Follow African Insider on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Source: AFP
Picture: Getty Images
For more African news, visit Africaninsider.com
