William Molinié 08:54, October 07, 2022

Six soldiers from the GIGN, the elite unit of the national gendarmerie, left Thursday to secure the French embassy and the diplomatic representation on the spot, after the anti-French violence in Ouagadougou on October 2.

The situation on site remains precarious, the safety of French nationals and the embassy is "a priority", recalled the Quai d'Orsay.

A week after the young captain Ibrahim Traoré's putsch, France decided to send six GIGN soldiers to secure the French embassy, ​​according to information collected by Europe 1. At 36, the young putschist was enthroned Wednesday President of the Burkina Faso in Ouagadougou, where the French embassy has still not reopened, six days after being damaged and vandalized during the coup.

Protesters accused France on Sunday of having protected deposed President Damiba, accusations denied shortly after by the Quai d'Orsay.

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A mission to protect the French ambassador

The situation on site remains precarious, the safety of French nationals and the embassy is "a priority", recalled the Quai d'Orsay.

The six GIGN soldiers left Thursday morning by plane to Ouagadougou.

These agents belong to the security-protection section of the intervention group. 

This group is made up of 50 gendarmes who carry out missions abroad throughout the year to secure diplomatic representations.

In Burkina Faso, these elite gendarmes will have to protect the French ambassador, in a context where anti-French sentiment is very present in the street, sometimes even exploited on social networks by Russia.

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Until now, the GIGN was deployed on this type of mission in Iraq, Libya and Ukraine.

Moreover, one of the unit's latest feats of arms was the mission to kyiv at the end of February, when a dozen members of the GIGN evacuated the French, Italian and Japanese embassies to the west of the country, while crossing the front line between Russians and Ukrainians.