OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Burkina Faso’s ruling military junta issued a decree Friday dismissing Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela and announcing the dissolution of the national government.
The military's leader, Ibrahim Traore, said officials in the dissolved government will continue to perform their duties until a new government is formed. No reason was given for the move.
The junta in Burkina Faso seized power in September 2022 by ousting the military rule of Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba about eight months after it staged a coup to remove democratically elected President Roch Marc Kaboré.
The country is one of several West African nations where the military has recently taken over, capitalizing on popular discontent with previous democratically elected governments over security issues.
However, since its inception, the junta has struggled to end Burkina Faso’s security challenges — the very reason that it claimed had prompted it to take power.
Growing attacks by extremists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have devastated Burkina Faso where thousands have been killed in recent years and more than 2 million people have been displaced, half of them children.
Around half of Burkina Faso’s territory remains outside of government control, analysts say.
The country's transitional government has been running under a constitution approved by a national assembly that included army officers, civil society groups and traditional and religious leaders.
Under pressure from West Africa's regional bloc known as ECOWAS, the junta had set a goal to conduct an election in July to return the country to democratic rule. However, in May it extended its transition term for five more years, the duration of one presidential term.
Alongside the coup-hit nations of Niger and Mali, Burkina Faso has severed ties with longstanding Western and regional partners, including former colonial ruler France and the regional bloc of ECOWAS, which they quit early this year.
FILE - People ride their scooters in the Gounghin district of Ouagadougou Wednesday Jan. 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Sophie Garcia, File)
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's top security agency said Thursday that it has arrested several suspects accused of involvement in an alleged Ukrainian plot to assassinate senior military officers, an announcement that follows the killing of a top Russian general last week.
The Federal Security Service, a top KGB successor known under its Russian acronym FSB, said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that it had arrested four Russians accused of making preparations to kill senior Defense Ministry officials.
The FSB said that the suspected organizers of the attacks were planning to kill one of the senior officers using a remotely controlled car bomb. It added that another top military official was to be assassinated by an explosive device hidden in an envelope. The agency didn't name the military officers who were targeted in the alleged plot.
The FSB released a video showing the arrest and interrogation of the suspects, who weren't named.
The statement follows the death of Lt. Gen Igor Kirillov who was killed on Dec. 17 by a bomb hidden on an electric scooter parked outside his apartment building as he left for his office. Kirillov’s assistant also died in the brazen attack that was claimed by Ukraine and brought the conflict once again to the streets of the Russian capital.
The FSB has arrested a suspect, a citizen of the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan, and claimed that he said that he had been recruited by Ukrainian special services.
Kirillov, 54, was the chief of Russia’s Radiation, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces. These special troops are tasked with protecting the military from the enemy’s use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and ensuring operations in a contaminated environment.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described Kirillov’s killing as a “major blunder” by Russia’s security agencies, noting they should learn from it and improve their efficiency.
Investigators work near a scooter at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant Ilya Polikarpov were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)
