Mali’s President Keita resigns after military mutiny
8162 Mins Read
Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has resigned and dissolved parliament, hours after mutinying soldiers detained him and top officials from his government.
“I want no blood to be spilled to keep me in power,” he said in a brief address broadcast on state television.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said it had decided to close its member states’ borders with Mali after mutinying soldiers detained President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
ECOWAS said in a statement it was also suspending all financial flows between its 15 members and Mali and suspending Mali from its decision-making bodies.
Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita . EPA-EFE/LUDOVIC MARIN / POOL
It called on the ECOWAS commission to impose sanctions on the “putschists and their partners and collaborators”.
It was not immediately clear who was leading the revolt, who would govern in Keita’s absence or what the mutineers wanted.
Images posted earlier on social media said to be taken at the Kati garrison showed Keita and Cisse surrounded by armed soldiers. Reuters could not verify the authenticity of the videos.
Mali has seen months of protests against alleged corruption and worsening security in the West African country where Islamist militants are active, and there have been calls for Keita to resign.
The M5-RFP coalition behind the protests signalled support for the mutineers’ action, with spokesman Nouhoum Togo telling Reuters it was “not a military coup but a popular insurrection”.
Hundreds of anti-government protesters poured into a central square in Bamako to celebrate and cheer the mutineers as they drove through in military vehicles and fired rounds of celebratory gunfire.
A mutiny in 2012 at the same Kati base led to a military coup that toppled then-President Amadou Toumani Toure and hastened the fall of Mali’s north to jihadist militants.
French forces intervened the following year to beat them back. But the militants have since regrouped and expanded their influence into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, attacking soldiers, civilians and Western tourists.
