{"id":160896,"date":"2022-01-23T12:06:05","date_gmt":"2022-01-23T04:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=160896"},"modified":"2022-01-23T12:06:05","modified_gmt":"2022-01-23T04:06:05","slug":"burkina-faso-forces-fire-tear-gas-at-anti-government-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=160896","title":{"rendered":"Burkina Faso forces fire tear gas at anti-government protests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Protesters
Protesters take to the streets of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0OUAGADOUGOU, Jan 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Security forces have fired tear gas at protesters barricading the streets and throwing rocks in Burkina Faso\u2019s capital, as\u00a0anger grows<\/a>\u00a0at the government\u2019s inability to stop armed attacks spreading across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several hundred people marched through downtown Ouagadougou on Saturday chanting for President Roch Marc Christian Kabore to resign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe jihadists are hitting [the country], people are dying, others are fleeing their homes \u2026 We want Roch and his government to resign because their handling of the country is not good. We will never support them,\u201d protester Amidou Tiemtore said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people were also protesting in solidarity with neighbouring Mali, whose citizens are angry at the West African economic regional bloc, ECOWAS, which imposed sanctions<\/a> on the country after the military government delayed this year\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burkina Faso\u2019s protest comes amid an\u00a0escalation in attacks<\/a>\u00a0linked to al-Qaeda and the Daesh group that has killed thousands and displaced 1.5 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worsening security situation has led to street protests calling for Kabore to step down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 12,000 people were displaced within two weeks in December, according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four French soldiers were also wounded during a joint operation with Burkina Faso\u2019s military. This is the first time French soldiers have been injured in the country since two men were killed in 2019 during a hostage release operation, Pascal Ianni, spokesman for the chief of defence for the French armed forces, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

France has some 5,000 soldiers in the region but until now has had minimal involvement in Burkina Faso compared with Niger or Mali.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the second government crackdown on protests since November, which comes after the government shut down access to Facebook last week citing security reasons and after arresting 15 people for allegedly plotting a coup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As tensions mount, the government is struggling to stem the violence. Last month, the president fired his prime minister and replaced most of the cabinet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government\u2019s national security arm is also said to be preparing to reopen negotiations with the armed rebels, according to a military official and a former soldier who did not want to be identified. The last time the government negotiated secret ceasefire talks with the rebels was around the 2020 presidential elections when the fighting subsided for several months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But locals say it is too late for talks and that the country is being overrun by armed groups that control swaths of land, plant their flags and make people abide by their interpretation of Islamic law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dThey just come and are squeezing people [out of their homes] and there is no [government] strategy,\u201d said Ousmane Amirou Dicko, the emir of Liptako. For the first time since the conflict, he said he no longer feels comfortable driving from the capital to his home in the Sahel. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0OUAGADOUGOU, Jan 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Security forces have fired tear gas at protesters barricading the streets and throwing rocks in Burkina Faso\u2019s capital, as\u00a0anger grows\u00a0at the government\u2019s inability to stop armed attacks spreading across the country. Several hundred people marched through downtown Ouagadougou on Saturday chanting for President Roch Marc Christian Kabore to resign. \u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[213],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160896"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}