The expulsions are the latest action taken by the military that runs the West African country against French media.

Burkina Faso kicked out two French journalists who worked for the newspapers Le Monde and Liberation, the newspapers said on Sunday. They accused the government of trying to shut down freedom of speech by getting tougher on foreign media.

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Liberation said that Agnès Faivre, a reporter for Liberation, and Sophie Douce, a reporter for Le Monde, both arrived in Paris early on Sunday. On Friday, the military authorities called each of them in for questioning and then told them they were being kicked out.

The two are "journalists of perfect integrity who worked in Burkina Faso legally, with valid visas and accreditations," Liberation said in an editorial statement on its website. "We strongly protest against these completely unjustified expulsions."

Burkina Faso's government did not say anything about it. Reuters asked the French foreign ministry for a comment, but they did not answer right away.

Since Burkina Faso's military took over in a coup last October, relations between Paris and Ouagadougou have gotten much worse.

In March, the Burkina military government got rid of a military aid deal it had made with France in 1961. Since then, it has told the French ambassador and troops to leave the country, and it has stopped RFI and France 24 from broadcasting.

In a statement, Le Monde Director Jérôme Fenoglio said, "These two expulsions are a new major setback for the freedom to report on the situation in Burkina Faso."

"Douce's reporting was obviously too much for the six-month transitional government of Ibrahim Traoré," he said.

Liberation said that Faivre's recent investigation "into how a video was made showing children and teens being killed by at least one soldier in a military barracks" had "clearly upset the junta very much."

"These limits on freedom of information are unacceptable and show that the power in charge doesn't want to be questioned about its actions," it said.

A spokesman for the Burkina government, Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo, said that the article was "manipulations disguised as journalism to hurt the country's reputation."

Reporters Without Borders, a group that fights for media rights, said that the military was going after the media to "hide its abuses."

Burkina Faso is one of several West African countries and former French colonies that are fighting violent groups that started in neighboring Mali and have spread across the area over the past ten years.

Even though there are foreign troops in the Sahel region south of the Sahara, thousands of people have died and more than two million have had to move.

Since 2020, two military takeovers in Burkina Faso and two in Mali happened because people were angry that the government wasn't doing enough to restore security.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES