Burkina Faso junta chief Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who took power in a January coup, has sacked his defence minister and assumed the role himself after a series of jihadist attacks, according to decrees published Monday.
The first decree, read on national television, removed General Barthelemy Simpore as defence minister, while the second said the “president has taken over the duties of the minister of national defence and veterans”.
Damiba headed a group of officers who mounted a coup on January 24, toppling elected leader Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who had failed to stem the jihadist insurgency that first emerged in Mali in 2012.
Much of the Sahel region is now battling the insurgency after it spread to Burkina Faso in 2015, then to Niger. In recent years, the violence has also begun to spill over into West African coastal states Ivory Coast and Togo.
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