A close ally of Blaise Compaoré, Burkina Faso's leader for 27 years, has been named the African nation's president following an apparent military coup.

The BBC reported the country's interim president, Michel Kafando, and prime minister, Isaac Zida, were detained at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday when presidential guard officers seized power in the capital of Ouagadougou, French President François Hollande told reporters. Kafando and Zida had been due to hand power to a new government after elections scheduled for Oct. 11.

At least 10 people were reported dead amid protests, the BBC said, and soldiers fired warning shots on Thursday to disperse a crowd gathered in Ouagadougou's Independence Square, where more than a 100 had gathered to demand the release of the interim government, Reuters added.

In an announcement on national television and radio, meanwhile, coup leaders announced that a curfew had been declared and that Burkina Faso's borders were closed, the Guardian reported. The United Nations, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States demanded "the immediate and unconditional release" Kafando and Zida, whose fate remains unclear.

The coup leaders appointed Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, Compaoré's former chief of staff, to head the newly created National Democracy Council (CND), Le Monde detailed. Diendéré justified the coup because of a "grave situation of insecurity ahead of the elections."

"I have not had any contact with (Compaoré), neither before nor after" the takeover, Diendéré insisted, however, in an interview with Jeune Afrique. "We have the support of the army. We have taken action (because of) the measures taken by the transitional authorities (that led) to the destabilization of the country," he added.

However, the leader of the transitional government in the Burkinabé parliament rejected the authority of the coup leaders, reports Reuters. 

"The transition was put in place by the will of the people, who fixed its duration and its mission...It is not a small group which is going to change that," Moumina Cheriff Sy told the newswire. "In the absence of President Kafando, I assume the leadership of the transition." 

Hollande also strongly condemned the coup in the former French colony.

"For all democrats, this is a terribly hard blow; we are all revolted," the French leader noted. "We had believed in a happy ending of the transition with the election campaign that was set begin on Sunday, but now a brutal decision has put an end to that process."