Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso — Two African mediators led talks yesterday in the Burkina Faso capital aimed at returning the troubled west African country to its “march to democracy” after last week’s coup.

Tensions remained high in Ouagadougou, where most shops remained shuttered after a confrontation on Friday between elite troops and protesters.

Senegalese President Macky Sall, chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and Benin President Thomas Boni Yayi met for two hours in a hotel with Opposition leaders and members of civil society groups.

They then headed to the home of the country’s interim president, Michel Kafando, who was released into house arrest after being detained by the members of the presidential guard on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Isaac Zida remained under house arrest, however.

The mediators were later to meet again with coup leader General Gilbert Diendere, the former chief of staff of former President Blaise Compaore, who was toppled by a popular uprising in October 2014.

Six people have been killed and at least 13 wounded in clashes sparked by Wednesday’s detention of the country’s interim leaders, a doctor at Ouagadougou’s main hospital told AFP on Friday.

A day after the detentions, the presidential guard declared a coup and installed Diendere as the new leader.

The elite army unit, which is loyal to Compaore, claimed that Kafando was excluding Compaore’s supporters from taking part in elections set for October 11.

The vote is supposed to mark the end of the transitional government installed after Compaore’s ouster.

After his first meeting with Diendere on Friday, Sall said: “We must create a dynamic of national reconciliation… to allow the country to reposition itself on its path and on its march to democracy.”

In the capital, amid growing calls for civil disobedience, the homes of two former Compaore allies — former Ouagadougou Mayor Simon Compaore, and Salif Diallo, who had joined opposition ranks in 2014 — were ransacked overnight Friday, an AFP reporter saw.

Residents erected makeshift barricades and burned tyres in several of the capital’s major arteries.

Other protests have taken place in several other cities and towns, including second city Bobo-Dioulasso, a hotspot for the Compaore uprising.

Residents there blocked the main access roads to the city, the country’s economic capital.

But the military lifted a curfew and reopened land and air borders that they had closed after seizing power.

A former French colony, previously named Upper Volta, Burkina Faso has had a long history of instability since it gained independence in 1960.

Overnight Friday, Diendere reiterated he had been acting in the country’s interest.

“We simply want to have proposals for elections that take place serenely and peacefully, and for results that are uncontested and uncontestable,” he told the French television channel TV5 Monde.

The 54-member African Union has suspended Burkina Faso and imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on the junta.

“All measures taken by those who took power by force in Burkina Faso are null and void,” Uganda’s AU Ambassador Mull Katende said Friday.

As the two African mediators arrived on Friday, members of the elite Presidential Security Regiment which spearheaded the coup, fired in the air to disperse protesters trying to march on Revolution Square, the epicentre of last year’s revolt against Compaore.