A wave of popular anger spread in Burkina Faso on Thursday as police followed the army in staging a mutiny a week after President Blaise Compaore formed a new government in a bid to quell the unrest.
Policemen fired shots into the air in the capital, Ouagadougou, on Thursday after a revolt began Wednesday night in a police barracks and officers streamed into the streets, firing their weapons.
Shooting was also heard from inside the capital’s main police station, which had been ringed by barricades.
Witnesses said the unprecedented police mutiny, which comes in the wake of an army revolt in recent weeks, also affected other cities, including Bobo-Dioulasso, the country’s second largest.
Shooting was also continuing in the eastern town of Fada N’Gourma while police were reported to have fired into the air in Dedougou in the west as well as in Manga and Po in the south.
Flashpoint town
On Wednesday, new violent protests erupted the flashpoint town of Koudougou as angry shopkeepers and students set fire to the mayor’s home and to the local police headquarters.
Witnesses said that a mob set fire to buildings to protest a decision by mayor Seydou Zagre to close about 40 shops that had failed to pay local taxes.
The protesters also set a local investment office ablaze.
Residents said that several hundred people then joined a march through the town, their ranks swelled by groups of students.
Koudougou, located 100km west of Ouagadougou, was the birthplace of a wave of protests in the country two months ago, placing growing pressure on Compaore, who has been in power for 24 years.
The first protest in Koudougou took place on February 22 when students took to the streets, saying a school pupil said to have died of meningitis was in fact tortured and killed in police custody.
Allegations of police impunity, torture and cover-ups and the high cost of living have fuelled mounting protests by all sectors of the population against Compaore’s regime.
Rampage
Soldiers, meanwhile, went on the rampage in several towns in protest at the imprisonment of several their colleagues for sex crimes and later to demand better pay and working conditions.
At least six people have been killed and many injured during the protests, while mass looting by mutinous soldiers caused extensive material damage. A curfew in Ouagadougou has been in place since mid-April.
Compaore sought to quell the turmoil by firing his government and several military chiefs, and offering bonuses to soldiers.
He also named himself defence minister and appointed a new prime minister, former ambassador to France Luc Adolphe Tiao.
The opposition has scheduled a large protest on Saturday against Compaore, who has been re-elected four times in contested polls since 1991.
The country is also beset by woeful social conditions, with much of the 16 million-strong population living on barely €1 a day, while prices of basic goods continue to rise. — AFP