Burkina Faso suspends French news channel over insurgency report

OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) -Burkina Faso's military government has suspended a French television news channel for a report on a jihadist insurgency which it said lacked objectivity and credibility, the latest escalation in a crackdown on foreign media.

Relations between Burkina Faso and its former coloniser France have soured since frustrations over worsening insecurity spurred two military takeovers last year.

French television channel La Chaine Info (LCI), of private broadcaster TF1, was suspended for three months from June 23 over a report aired at the end of April, according to a statement by the national media regulator published on Thursday.

The media regulator said the report overplayed the scale of the insurgency and "seditiously" exposed "unverified" failures in Burkina Faso's military response to the crisis.

A TF1 spokesperson declined to comment.

The ruling junta has already suspended French-funded broadcasters Radio France Internationale and France24 for allegedly giving voice to Islamist militants staging an insurgency across the Sahel region south of the Sahara.

In April, two French journalists working for newspapers Le Monde and Liberation were expelled from the country.

Burkina Faso is one of several West African countries grappling with an insurgency by groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State that took root in Mali in 2012.

The violence has killed thousands of civilians and displaced more than six million people as militants have gained ground, according to the United Nations.

Burkina Faso's army said militants had attacked a military unit in the western province of Mouhoun on Tuesday, killing eight soldiers, and an army auxiliary camp in the northern province of Sanmatenga on Monday, leaving 33 auxiliaries dead.

The army did not identify the attackers in either case or say if the incidents were linked.

(Reporting by Thiam Ndiaga; Additional reporting by Jean-Michel Belot in Paris, Writing by Sofia Christensen; Editing by Nellie Peyton, Angus MacSwan and Andrew Heavens)