APA – Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) – Captain Ibrahim Traoré on Wednesday signed several decrees appointing new heads of several Burkinabe army units.
The well-known Lieutenant Colonel Evrard Somda is no longer head of the national gendarmerie. He was replaced by another lieutenant colonel, Kouagri Natama. In a presidential decree signed on Wednesday, Natama was appointed chief of staff of Burkina Faso’s gendarmerie.
The appointment comes just days after an attempted coup against Captain Traoré, who claimed last Friday that some Pandores had been “manipulated.”
“If there are elements within the gendarmerie that harm the people, they will react. For the moment, it’s only a few individuals within the gendarmerie who are being manipulated,” said the president of the transition, Captain Ibrahim Traoré. Following this destabilization attempt, the military prosecutor in Ouagadougou is investigating six officers, four of whom are already in custody, while the other two are on the run.
Until now, the national gendarmerie was the only branch of the Burkinabe army still headed by a man appointed by the former regime. Evrard Somda has been the head of the gendarmerie since February 2022. He was appointed by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba, who was dismissed by Captain Traoré in September 2022.
Other army units have experienced changes at the top.
After taking power in September 2022, Captain Traoré made several changes within the army. In November 2022, he created Rapid Intervention Battalions and new military regions.
Since then, nearly twenty new commanders of the armed forces have been appointed. In early April, Colonel Major Celestin Simpore was appointed Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff.
SD/ac/lb/abj/APA