Gunfire rang out early Friday in Burkina Faso’s capital and the state broadcaster went off the air, sparking fears of a mutiny nine months after a military coup d’etat overthrew the country’s president.
It was not immediately known where Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba was in the West African country, as he had given a speech the day before in Djibo, in the north of Burkina Faso.
Last week, Damiba had traveled to New York where he addressed the U.N. General Assembly as the country’s coup leader-turned-president, defending his January coup as “an issue of survival for our nation,” even if it was ”perhaps reprehensible” to the international community.