While gunfire rang out in the streets, Burkina Faso’s military took to the airwaves Thursday to declare it now controls the West African country in a coup mounted weeks before elections.

The United Nations chief called for the immediate release of interim President Michel Kafando and Prime Minister Isaac Zida, who were detained during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday.

The statement also announced the closure of the West African nation’s land and air borders as well as the implementation of an overnight curfew.

Jeff Smith, the Africa Policy Director at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, stated that “today’s events in Burkina Faso, which comes almost one year after last October’s mass protests, may very likely be the result of the recent shake-up within the country’s presidential security”.

The office of France’s president Francois Hollande said the president strongly condemned the coup d’état and called for the immediate liberation of all who are arrested and for the authorities who were ruling the country to be reinstalled.

ECOWAS chief, Senegal’s President Macky Sall, will visit Burkina Faso on Friday, an official source said on condition of anonymity.

Ban condemned “in the strongest terms” the coup led by a close ally of toppled former leader Blaise Compaore.

From Accra, the capital of neighboring Ghana, NPR’s Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports that the latest coup is just 10 months after an uprising in Burkina Faso ousted the President Blaise Compaore, and that the counter-coup appears to have been staged by soldiers loyal to him. “In the absence of President Kafando, I assume the leadership of the transition”.

In his announcement, Lt-Col Bamba said wide-ranging talks were being held to form a new interim government that would organise “peaceful and inclusive elections”.

The commission, which includes prominent Burkinabes and civil society representatives, proposed that the presidential guard be integrated into the military police and the gendarmerie.

Transitional Parliamentary Speaker, Cheriff Sy, had called for people to “immediately rise up” against the coup, and declared himself the leader of the country.

A transitional government had been charged with running the country until the elections but Compaore supporters were banned from standing under a controversial law passed in April that made anyone backing “unconstitutional change” ineligible.