Taiwan raises travel alert for Burkina Faso after military coup

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/09/18
By: Elaine Hou

Taipei, Sept. 18 (CNA) Taiwan raised its travel alert for Burkina Faso on Friday from yellow to orange, the second highest in its four-color alert system, after the country’s presidential guards carried out a coup just weeks before national elections.

Presidential guards burst into a Cabinet meeting at the presidential palace in the capital Ouagadougou and took the interim president, prime minister and other senior officials hostage Wednesday, and later announced that they had been removed from office.

The latest political unrest sparked violence in the streets, and the presidential guards fired live ammunition to disperse crowds protesting the coup, leaving at least six dead and dozens injured as of Friday morning, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Burkina Faso’s land and air borders have been closed and a curfew has been imposed, the ministry said. Burkina Faso is one of Taiwan’s three diplomatic allies in Africa.     [FULL  STORY]