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A mission of the African Union (AU) is in Burkina Faso led by a regime resulting from a coup d'etat, to assess the situation of a country undermined by jihadist violence and suspended from the pan-African organization, noted Sunday an AFP journalist.

Arrived Saturday evening in Ouagadougou, this delegation of the AU Peace and Security Council, 31 members strong and led by Ambassador Mohamed Lamine Thiaw, had a closed-door working session with the Burkinabè government on Sunday.

"As a competent body in terms of security at the continental level, it is our duty to come to Burkina Faso in view of the situation that the country is going through, especially the questions concerning the security and humanitarian aspect", declared Mr. Thiaw, before the start of this meeting.

According to him, this mission also "aims to mark the solidarity of the AU with the government and the people of Burkina Faso and also to reiterate the commitment of the AU to accompany Burkina Faso to meet the challenge of the fight against insecurity" .

The Burkinabè Minister of Foreign Affairs, Olivia Rouamba, hailed "this sizeable and quality delegation that has come to assess the situation in Burkina, in all its aspects: security, humanitarian and development". “Beyond that, it is a question of seeing, with the authorities of Burkina Faso, the appropriate solutions for a way out of the crisis,” she added.

Since a first coup in January 2022, Burkina Faso, followed eight months later by a second, has been suspended from AU bodies. The country has carried out several negotiations to reinstate her, which have so far remained unsuccessful, recalled Ms. Rouamba, for whom "the presence in Burkina Faso of such a delegation augurs well for an evolution" .

After the working session with the government, the delegation, which is staying in Ouagadougou until Wednesday, is due to meet the transitional president and author of the last putsch in September 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, Prime Minister Appolinaire Joachimson Kyelem de Tambela, and the president of the transitional legislative assembly, Ousmane Bougouma.

Sunday morning, she visited internally displaced people on the outskirts of the Burkinabè capital.

Since 2015, Burkina has been caught in a spiral of violence perpetrated by jihadist groups linked to the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

They have killed more than 16,000 civilians and soldiers since 2015, according to the latest estimates from the international NGO Armed conflict location action (Acled), which lists the victims of conflicts worldwide, including more than 5,000 since the beginning of 2023.

This violence has also led to the displacement of some two million people