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French press review 3 March 2018

Another terrorist attack on Ouagadougou raises new questions about France's military presence in Africa.

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We focus on reactions by the commentators to the twin attacks on the French embassy and Burkina Faso's military headquarters in the capital Ouagadougou on Friday.

The country's Security Minister Clement Sawadogo is quoted by the papers as saying that eight members of the armed forces were killed, while 80 others were wounded, in the attack in which eight of the armed men were shot dead.

Le Figaro carries a reassuring confirmation by Defence Minister Jean Yves Le Drian that no French soldiers were killed in the attack. The right-wing newspaper quotes the official as saying that the gunmen seemed to have targeted a meeting of the G5 Sahel regional counter-terrorism force.

Officials from Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso had originally planned to meet at a room at army headquarters, targeted in a powerful explosion but changed the venue at the very last minute.

Le Journal de la Haute-Marne says the Islamist insurgents must have been tipped off about the venue.

France it says has the moral duty to defend such small nations, now at the mercy of affiliates of Al-Qaeda and ISIS while it also tries to defend the honour of a EU countries unwilling to pledge troops and money in the perilous long war against terror in the Sahel.

L'Humanité recalls that after a previous attack on Ouagadougou, President Macron insisted that G-5 countries to take charge of their own security. The objective according to the Communist daily was to help them set up a 10,000-strong force with a budget of 450 million euros. But as it underlines, at their last G-5 meeting in Niamey, Mali's President announced a shortfall of 294 million euros needed to get the force on the ground.

Le Parisien says President Emmanuel Macron understands France's solitary stance in the war. For the paper, this is why he wasted no time in praising the bravery of French soldiers and reaffirming the complete engagement of his government in bringing security to the Sahel starting by stepping up security measures at French embassies in Africa.

Libération claims that jihadist hypothesis made its rounds in Ouagadougou as memories of the attacks on a café and a restaurant in 2016 and 2017 in which 47 people were killed remain fresh in people’s minds. But as the paper indicates social media was awash with rumours of coup de force by dissident soldiers.

According to Libé, many of the eyewitnesses it reached in Ouaga all pointed at ousted President Blaise Compaoré, suspected to be behind the alleged attempt to destabilize the country.

Libération's thesis is based on the fact that the trial of army Generals Gilbert Diendéré and Djibrill Bassolé, close to Compaoré for the role in a foiled coup in 2015 opened in Ougagdougou on Tuesday.

The publication claims that some Blaise nostalgic as they are describes by Burkinabés may have tried to stage another coup in support of the generals, a hypothesis dismissed as far-fetched by a French officier reached by the Libé.

Yet Liberation won't dismiss claims by a so-called connoisseur of Burkinabe politics that soldiers' trial is creating tensions in the country seen by experts as the weakling of the Sahel.

L'Humanité accuses former President Nicolas Sarkozy of destabilizing the Sahel through his military intervention in Libya in 2011. The paper upholds the conviction that it was downfall of Libyan President Moamar Kaddafi, which led to the scattering of his military arsenal, some of it ending up in the hands of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.

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